Gerard Lee McKeever, 'Dialectics of Improvement: Scottish Romanticism, 1786–1831' Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020

Gerard Lee McKeever’s Dialectics of Improvement begins by bringing into juxtaposition two contrasting perspectives on the work of “improvers” in Scotland in the age of Enlightenment and Romanticism (pp. 1–2). On the one hand, the Edinburgh Magazine, or Literary Miscellany reprinted in its December 1786 issue an article by “A. S.” from the Political Herald, and Review, titled “On Improvements in Scotland,” which celebrated the nation’s rapid progress and innovation in such areas as agriculture, commerce, and the mechanical arts. On the other hand, the Castle Douglas Weekly Visitor, and Literary Miscellany reprinted on 21 January 1831 an essay from an unspecified collection, condemning recent attempts toward the reformation of “manners and sentiments” as a process of “indiscriminately reversing and changing, till what commenced in improvement has ended in deterioration.”