In his intriguing book, Populism, Gender, and Sympathy in the Romantic Novel, James P. Carson reads Romantic novels in a biographical, historical, and political context, exploring the representation of crowds. He reveals the ambivalence of Romantic authors on issues of gender, popular culture, and social control. By focusing primarily on the masses rather than the individual and on sound rather than vision, the book offers a fresh perspective on the social and political issues at stake in late-eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century fiction.