The Trembling Hand: Reflections of a Black Woman in the Romantic Archive

by Mathelinda Nabugodi

Bracing and essential, a radical reframing of British Romanticism through the lens of Black experience – for fans of David Olusoga, Gretchen Gerzina, Saidiya Hartman and Emma Dabiri

Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron, Keats – the Romantic poets are titans of English literature, taught and celebrated around the world. Their work is associated with sublime passions, violent stormscapes and a questing search for the inner self. It is rarely associated with the racial politics of the transatlantic slave economy.

But these literary icons lived through a period when individual and collective resistance by Black people in Britain and her overseas colonies was making it increasingly difficult – and increasingly costly – to ignore their demands for freedom. A time when popular support for the abolition movement exploded across the country – and was met by a vehement, reactionary campaign from the establishment. A time when white supremacist ideologies were fomented to justify the abuse and exploitation of non-white "races." This cultural context is not immediately obvious in the canon of Romantic poetry. But that doesn’t mean it’s not there.

The Trembling Hand turns an urgent critical gaze onto six major Romantic authors, examining how their lives and works were entangled with the racist realities of their era. Mathelinda Nabugodi pores over carefully preserved manuscripts, travels to the houses where these writers lived and died, examines the personal objects which survived a teacup, a baby rattle, a lock of hair. Amid this archive, she searches for traces of Black figures whose lives crossed paths with the great Romantics. And she grapples with the opposing forces of reverence and horror as her fascination with literary relics collides with feelings of sorrow and rage.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Criticism

432 pages, Hardcover

Published July 31, 2025

Reviews

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was an absorbing peek into the complications we usually don't hear about, when it comes to the lives of the iconic English romantic poets. Nabugodi has studied the poets in the conventional way, but there is more to the story than that.

Each section of the book digs into aspects of these lives by way of a visit to one or more items in the collections of things archived for posterity. She sits with the item (Shelley's coral baby rattle, Byron's orthopedic boot, and so on) and talks about what it is, but then parts the curtain of conventional wisdom to show us what else is there. It should come as no surprise that all of these people, who were connected in one way or another to the English upper class of the nineteenth century, were not only near, but bound up and supported by, the slave economy of the Caribbean, and even had things to say, directly or indirectly, about African people.

I want to tip my metaphorical hat to her for giving Mary Shelley her own chapter. And while the poetry of these people appealed to me as a teenager, there are some hints here that help explain why I lost interest in it later in life (except for Ozymandias, I will always love that one). I did not know that Rime of the Ancient Mariner was heavily revised (into the version we know now) to remove or obscure the ways in which it took sideways aim at the slave trade. I never did like Wordsworth and he certainly seems to add up to an unappealing individual.

Elegantly written and also stingingly honest, this should be read alongside any class in romantic poetry or any personal ventures into that canon. The point is not to take down a peg those famous writers who may be your favorites; the point is to know the whole story, so you can take their work in its full context.

Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read an advance copy of this book.

[Tony · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just finished reading this stellar work of nonfiction courtesy of knopf written by Mathelinda Nabugodi.

   The Trembling Hand is not just a historical piece, but a really smart observation and testament of how the shadows of historical racism are still largely at play today. Nabugodi immersed herself in not just the writings of the "greats" of the Romantic age (Keats, Byron, Mary & Percy Shelley, etc) but really put into context how it's relatable today. She had a hands-on approach to artifacts and records that guided her between the past and present. 

    On her journey, she brings light when possible and finds beauty and joy. The way she can create such a balance just blows my mind, when things make me see red...I can only imagine the struggle. Don't get me started on the tale of touching hair....

    This was a fascinating look at a history that I didn't know. This is why it is SO important to learn history. We are still discovering stories and facts while there is a hurry to erase them. Speak up, read along, and don't let it go away. It is the only way we can ever get to a place of doing better. 

   

[Kim Alkemade · Rating 5 out of 5]

Literary analysis, history and memoir combine in this intriguing exploration of the Romantic poets and their intersection with the greatest political and moral issue of their day: Britain's role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the murderous exploitation of enslaved Africans on plantations in the Caribbean. Nabugodi shares her visceral reactions as she leads us through a critical reconsideration of archival materials that reveal the traces of slavery in everything from the sweetness in a poet's tea cup to the plantation owner who purchased Byron's estate. Stylish, personal, rigorous and ultimately devastating, this excellent work reveres the aesthetic accomplishments of the Romantics while unflinchingly confronting their complicity.

[Rosalind · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully written reconsideration of two usually disparate pieces of history - disparate not because the Romantic poets did not interact with the transatlantic slave trade (which this book reveals was woven into the very fabric of each of their lives), but because we rarely choose to tell the histories side by side. Pressing these two pieces of history back together, Mathelinda Nabugodi begins to truly reconstruct what the past looked like. A must-read for any Romanticist or English major.

[Nuno 🦈 · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has became one of my favorite books of all time. I didn’t read this book, I religiously STUDIED and tried to absorb as much knowledge as I could! This book is so important to everyone, and I am sad that I finished it, even though I took months to finish it cuz I didn’t want to end it.
Congratulations for Dr. Nabugodi for writing this book, I am excited to read more book from her.

[Ace · Rating 5 out of 5]

if you are a lover of the romantic era of poetry, if you are a white person, if you simply want to think deeply—pick up this book.

[chloe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nabugodi's ability to move between and connect wide-ranging material and ideas is always exceptional.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Trembling Hand is an engrossing study of the relationship between two seemingly contradicting phenomena of the early 19th century: the Romantic literary movement and the trans-Atlantic slave trade (and the practice of chattel slavery in the Americas). These two phenomena are usually presented in scholarship as ideologically opposed, given the radical ideals of Romanticism, therefore obscuring their complex, even contradictory, interactions. Nabugodi dispels this whitewashed history of Romanticism through the use of archival research, with each chapter dedicated to a physical object associated with a major Romantic figure, tracing the intricate presence of anti-Black racism and the normalization of chattel slavery in the Romantic writers' everyday lives. The argument's use of material culture, sociology, and personal narrative are illuminating and deeply compelling. I immediately bought a copy of this book for my home library.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for an advance copy of this book.