On of the defining features of Romantic writing, critics have long argued, is its characterization of the self in terms of psychological depth. Many Romantic writers, however, did not conceive of the self in this way, and in Romantic Identities Andrea K. Henderson investigates that part of Romantic writing that challenges the "depth" model, or operates outside its domain.

Henderson explores various forms of Romantic discourse, explains their economic and social contexts, and examines their differing conceptions of identity.

Individual chapters treat the Romantic view of the self in embryo and at birth, the relation of gothic characterization to the ghostliness of exchange value, anti-essentialism in Romantic physiology, the conception of self as genre in writings by Percy and Mary Shelley, and the link between economic circulation and the distrust of psychological interiority in Scott.