Born in Marinette, in northeastern Wisconsin, I grew up in a community of 14,000 on the shores of Green Bay, where I developed a strong affinity for the Northern environment, and for the "large" body of water (Green Bay is an extension of Lake Michigan), neither of which I have ever lost. Beginning in 1969 my wife and I spent time in northern Wisconsin, the "big woods" country of Vilas County, an environment which has had considerable influence on me. My maternal grandparents were in the monument business. I recall years accompanying the monument workers in various tasks of setting out and maintaining monuments in the rural cemeteries of northeastern Wisconsin and Upper Michigan. My strong feelings about both "place" and the animals that inhabit various "places" I have known are reflected in my poetry. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin, I taught briefly in Minnesota and Pennsylvania before coming to Nebraska to take up my present position. The vast expanses of land and sky of the Great Plains have, likewise, influenced both the subjects and the style of my poetry. My love of music and the arts-both of which figure heavily in all the courses I teach-remains as strong as ever. I am by primary profession a teacher and scholar in British Romanticism, with a strong interest as well in the eighteenth century. My research and teaching interests involve the relation of the various arts as well as cultural history as a whole. I have published extensively on these diverse topics, and have made many presentation at a variety of professional conferences. My poetry is very much a part of the "total" me: I can no longer imagine teaching poetry without having had the experience of writing it, nor can I imagine any part of my teaching which is not intricately interwoven with my scholarly and creative work. The parts are inseparable.

Books written or edited by Stephen C. Behrendt

Romanticism and Women Poets: Opening the Doors of Reception

Royal Mourning and Regency Culture: Elegies and Memorials of Princess Charlotte

Romanticism, Radicalism, and the Press

Approaches to Teaching British Women Poets of the Romantic Period

A Step in the Dark: Poems

Reading William Blake

Instruments of the Bones: Poems

Approaches to Teaching Shelley's Frankenstein

History and Myth: Essays on English Romantic Literature

Shelley and His Audiences

The Moment of Explosion: Blake and the Illustration of Milton