Stephen Bending: Cowper and Landscape

Professor Stephen Bending is Professor of Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture at the University of Southampton. He has published widely on the representation of gender, identity, and emotion in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, and much of his work focuses on gardens. He is editor of A Cultural History of Gardens in the Age of Enlightenment (Bloomsbury, 2013) and a monograph, Green Retreats: Women, Gardens and Eighteenth-Century Culture in 2013 (CUP, 2013). Recently, he has worked on the garden-hating popularizer of the picturesque, William Gilpin, on the symbolic meaning of plants during the Enlightenment, and on a piece of fruit bush netting woven by the poet William Cowper for the RÊVE Romantic Dwelling Virtual Collection.
Music: 'Felicity' by Scott Buckley: www.scottbuckley.com.au