The British Association for Romantic Studies (BARS) International Conference 2026

Romantic retrospection

In-person: Wednesday 29 – Friday 31 July 2026

University of Birmingham, Edgbaston Campus, Birmingham

Keynote speakers

• Ruth Abbott (University of Cambridge)
• Richard Cronin (University of Glasgow)
• Mary Favret (Johns Hopkins University)

Online conference: Thursday 6 August 2026

Keynote speaker

• Nikki Hessell (Victoria University of Wellington, Te Herenga Waka)

The British Association for Romantic Studies’ 2026 International Conference will take as its theme Romantic Retrospection. The Romantic period has frequently been associated with newness, whether that’s its poets ushering in a new age reflective of a new spirit, moral and political philosophies associated with emerging notions of modern government and the self in relation to others, visions of utopian and dystopian futures, or a deeper appreciation for and sense of responsibility towards the natural world. Yet one of the contradictions and therefore abiding instincts of Romanticism is the way its writers, artists, and thinkers invariably performed a double move: looking and moving forward by glancing and turning back.

Romantics saw and even defined themselves in relation to what had come before, tried to understand and explore the present by means of the past, contemplated their own past lives and selves as well as cultural and national memory, shaped their works out of a multitude of traditions and inheritances to which they remained admiring and indebted as well as sceptical. If Romantics sometimes register the burden of the past, they equally express and find in it forms of license and freedom. The influence of the Romantics, in turn, cast a spell over subsequent generations, who had to wrestle with a powerful artistic legacy. Literary criticism, meanwhile, has long been embroiled in re-evaluating Romanticism, and its continuing relevance to or place within the academy.

The conference invites both in person and online participation. There will be a three-day in-person event at the University of Birmingham with a digital event the following week. The in-person conference will not be streamed, but participants will be encouraged to upload recordings of their papers, which will be made available in a digital archive accessible to both in-person and online participants for a limited time.

Registration

• Registration is now open for both the in-person BARS conference running 29-31 July, and the online BARS conference running 6 August.
• Please note there is a separate link for accommodation bookings for the in-person conference. Also please note the accommodation booking deadline (June 7) is earlier than the conference registration deadline (July 5).
• Please note if you are attending both in person and online conferences, you must register for both at the same time via the In person conference registration platform here. If you are attending both, you do not pay an additional fee for the online conference.

In person conference - registration link here

• Full Conference (three days) Waged £250.00
• Full Conference (three days) Concession (unwaged or PGR student) £170.00
• One Day Waged £130.00
• One Day Concession (unwaged or PGR student) /Half-Fee Bursaries £90.00

The Online Conference fee is included as part of the in-person registration. You must select that option to confirm your attendance.

Deadline for in person conference registration Sunday July 5

Accommodation for in person conference – registration and details link here

• Rooms available for up to four nights, Tuesday 28 to Friday 31 July.
• Rooms are £70.00 per night including breakfast

Deadline for accommodation Sunday June 7

Online conference – registration link here*

• Digital Waged £70.00
• Digital Concession unwaged or PGR student £50.00

*please only register here if you are NOT also attending the in person conference.

Deadline for online conference registration Wednesday August 5

Display of Ernest de Selincourt Materials 

2026 marks the centenary of the publication of the thirteen-book version of William Wordsworth’s The Prelude. The poem, completed by the poet in 1805, was unearthed and edited by the University of Birmingham Professor, Ernest de Selincourt. Its appearance in 1926 has shaped a century of Romantic studies. The conference will feature a display of de Selincourt’s papers from the University of Birmingham’s Cadbury Archives, which will also be made available online.

Excursion

The conference will include an optional excursion to The Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum and Bookshop, just north of Birmingham at Lichfield.

The excursion will be on Saturday 1st August and cost £15, with limited places available (45). The coach will leave our Edgbaston campus at 09:30 on Saturday 1 August, to return by 16:30.

Further particulars and papers

Please note, the call for papers for this conference is now closed.

We have invited contributions on any aspect of Romantic Retrospection in relation to the writing, culture, institutions, practices, and criticism of the Romantic period. Topics that papers might address could include (but are not limited to):

• Romantic biography and autobiography
• Editing, anthologising, and reviewing
• Romanticism and the Classical world
• Romantic period reception of and responses to the early modern and eighteenth century
• Personal, local, national, and cultural pasts
• Vision and revision; rewriting and revisiting
• Change and conservation; memory and nostalgia
• Forms of attention and the role of the senses
• Tradition and renovation, especially formal and stylistic
• Influence and inheritance; allusion and echo
• The formation and reformation of canons, taste, and aesthetics
• Histories of places, institutions, and practices
• Loss, grief, and elegy
• Science and technology
• The Romantic sense of history and the history of the period
• The Romantic sense of the future and the future of Romantic studies
• Romantic legacies

Further updates will be posted on this site in due course. General enquiries may be directed to the conference email account: bars2026@contacts.bham.ac.uk.