ABSTRACT
The conclusion considers the case of Polwhele’s successful completion of James Beattie’s poem The Minstrel (1814) as a culminating example of the ways in which Polwhele’s career defies expectation and easy categorisation. In drawing attention to what can and cannot say about Polwhele from such a reading, the chapter ends with some reflections about the ways in which revisionist literary studies succeed or otherwise in capturing the value of the recondite, the awkward and the uncomfortable; and the questions of complicity that arise from either the inclusion or exclusion of figures such as Polwhele from the literary canon.
