SOURCE: Fulford, Tim, and Debbie Lee. “The Jenneration of Disease: Vaccination, Romanticism, and Revolution.” Studies in Romanticism 39, no. 1 (spring 2000): 139-63.

In the following essay, Fulford and Lee focus on how the vaccination debate prompted by the small pox research of Edward Jenner resonated with the concerns of Romantic pastoral poetry and, in turn, the class divisions of early nineteenth-century society. In particular, the authors emphasize Jenner's relationship with the rural poet Robert Bloomfield.

In 1798, Britain was preparing for invasion by French revolutionary armies. To the government and the press it seemed ill-prepared to defend itself. The navy had recently mutinied at Spithead and the Nore, and pro-French radicals were fomenting discontent amongst the laboring classes. Worse still, France was threatening Britain's colonies in the East and West Indies. Faced with the exigencies of national politics and imperial war, the established powers in London found little opportunity to pay...