The present volume, number VIII in the series "Groningen Studies in Cultural Change", offers a selection of papers presented at a workshop organised by Amanda Gilroy and Wil Verhoeven entitled "Green and Pleasant Land: English Culture and the Romantic Countryside". The contributions in this volume illuminate the ideological investments of particular ways of experiencing the English countryside of the Romantic era. While their analyses of cultural change are historically specific, they explore, too, the conflicted present-day legacies of romantic landscapes.