Brian Goldberg's illuminating and nuanced work follows from what he accurately describes as a “deceptively simple claim” (23) made by William Wordsworth in the preface to Lyrical Ballads, namely, that the poet's labor is distinct from, but similarly valuable to, other kinds of professional work. Likewise, Goldberg begins from a rather simple thesis—that the Lake poets attempt to establish for themselves, and for others, a professional identity as poets. From this point, however, Goldberg produces a complex account of the origins of such professionalism in several different eighteenth-century models. He does not fall into the teleological trap of arguing that the Lake poets somehow solve the professional crisis established in the eighteenth century but rather asserts that their “attempt to redeem the idea of professional work for the practice of poetry … was sometimes frustrated but other times energised by what eighteenth-century intellectual work was actually turning into” (4). Part of the book's success results from Goldberg's ability to show these authors’ collective project as a continual struggle and not as a felicitous completion. The open-ended nature of the establishment of professional identity looks forward to its continued struggle for consolidation in the later nineteenth century and into the twentieth.

Although ostensibly about the Lake poets, in many ways Goldberg's book is equally focused on eighteenth-century writers and theorists of professionalism. The first chapter takes up one particular eighteenth-century profession, the cleric, and treats the category of “risk” in Coleridge and Wordsworth as “a principle that distinguished a traditional professional identity from a more progressive and acceptable one” (27). After this first part, though, Goldberg more fully considers the eighteenth-century models that informed the Lake writers’ thinking. It may come as no surprise, then, that Goldberg positions himself as a scholar of the long eighteenth century. So while he revises how we think of Romantic professionalism, he also aims to reconsider the status of the professions in eighteenth-century thought. In particular, he claims that we often overemphasize the rapidity with which “literary production was moving … from a patronage- to a market-based model” (1). In his readings of Richard Savage, James Beattie, and William Cowper, Goldberg shows both the promise and the peril the market offered as an alternative to patronage. The latter was not simply cast off and the former fully embraced—writers like Savage and Beattie instead attempt to reconfigure how a patronage system might work in the context of an increasingly influential literary marketplace. This focus on professionalism in the eighteenth century offers a broad appeal in its attention to issues ranging from a reading of David Hume's conception of space to the sociological, economic, and aesthetic implications of the move toward a market-based system of literary production.

While at times the book's middle section can feel withdrawn from the larger argument, Goldberg ultimately succeeds at bringing it back to the book's main thrust: how the early Romantic writers receive and revise earlier models of professionalism. The book's penultimate chapter, on Robert Southey, accomplishes this task with particular grace. Goldberg focuses on a public feud between Southey and Herbert Croft over the publication of Thomas Chatterton's letters. Croft, it seems, more or less swindled Chatterton's mother and sister in acquiring the letters from them. Southey reveals this impropriety to the public in the introduction to his own edition of Chatterton's works. The disagreement revolves around competing notions of class affiliation, intellectual property, and professional decorum. The crux of the argument is that Croft relies on a model of professionalism rooted in aristocratic affiliation, whereas Southey adheres to a nascent set of criteria for professional behavior in the literary marketplace. Goldberg's treatment of the feud shows, most pointedly, the instability of professional identity, both for those clinging to older models, like Croft, and for the Lake poets attempting to solidify their standing as professional men of letters. Contradictions abound in both versions, but Goldberg reveals insights about the projects precisely through these inconsistencies.

The book concludes with a treatment of Wordsworth's articulation of professional identity, which similarly revolves around the contradictions brought out by Southey and Croft's feud. The Lake writers attempt to forge new ground, but they must do so by appealing to traditional models of professionalism. Ultimately, Goldberg frames this not as a conservative move but as one of reform: Wordsworth and the other Lake poets must look both “toward the institutions that frame social action, including work, and toward the necessary, imaginative impulses that change and improve them” (231). We might say that Goldberg's book accomplishes its task through a similar structure. Although the issue of professional identity may be a familiar one to scholars of the long eighteenth century, this book succeeds in recasting how we consider the topic. It reinforms our view of the eighteenth-century man of letters as a profession and stresses the importance of this reconception to our understanding of Romantic professionalism. And furthermore, Goldberg opens up avenues for future discussion of second-generation Romantics and of Victorian-era professionalism. The later nineteenth century saw not only the professional writer's further development but also the explosion of new kinds of viable middle-class professions and the institutions to uphold them. As such, Goldberg's book should immediately appeal to those with an interest in eighteenth-century literature and culture and to scholars of Romanticism, but perhaps the true mark of its success will be its influence on future considerations of professionalism in the second half of the nineteenth century.