Presences that Disturb examines the historical and cultural contexts that determined the Romantic self in a revolutionary decade. It explores the ways in which canonical writers such as Wordsworth, Coleridge and Keats, and significant political figures such as John Thelwall, imaginatively identified with certain emblematic presences - from the Dark Age hermit-king Tewdrig to the Polish patriot-General Kosciusko and the Welsh jacobin bard Edward Williams - as instructive models and haunting second selves. Addressing recent new historicist critiques, this analysis of Romantic identity discusses both the subtle ways in which these crucial but neglected presences inhabit literary texts and their broader cultural impact.