British Literature in Credo: Romanticism

A late 18c and early 19c movement in art, literature and music, characterized by an emphasis on feelings and emotions, often using imagery taken from nature, and creating forms which are relatively free from rules and set orders. Also refers specifically to late-18th- and early-19th-century European culture, as contrasted with 18th-century classicism and emotions over reason and intellect.

From Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 1760-1850
In popular cultural reception, the literary legacy of “Romanticism” tends to be identified with the idea of “imagination.”

From The Welsh Academy Encyclopaedia of Wales
Although Romanticism appeared in Wales at the end of the 18th century, its roots are to be found in the work of antiquarians at the end of the 17th, with their enthusiasm for the remote Celtic and druidic past.

English novelist, noted particularly for the insight and delicate irony of her portrayal of middle-class families.

British writer of ballads and historical novels, a genre he developed. His works include Waverley (1814) and Ivanhoe (1819).

British feminist and writer, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792); wife of William Godwin and mother of Mary Shelley. Since her rediscovery by the women’s movement during the 1970s, Mary Wollstonecraft has been championed as the seminal voice in the long struggle for women’s emancipation in Britain. A courageous but at times deeply troubled and unhappy woman, she rebelled against the social strictures of her time, twice choosing to live openly with the man she loved.

William Blake, born in London where he spent all but three years of his life, was both poet and visionary artist. Despite having a number of artist friends, he was one of the first unrecognized geniuses of the Romantic age.

English Romantic poet; major works include Don Juan (1819-24) and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812-18).

British poet; author of spurious medieval verse and prose: he committed suicide at the age of 17.

English poet, critic, and philosopher; well-known for poems such as The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798) and Kubla Khan (1816).

English poet. His finest poetry is contained in Lamia and other Poems (1820), which includes The Eve of St Agnes, Hyperion, and the odes On a Grecian Urn, To a Nightingale, To Autumn, and To Psyche.

English poet and essayist. He lived much of his life abroad, dying in Florence, where he had fled to avoid a libel suit in 1858.

Poet and political thinker, born at Field Place, near Horsham, West Sussex, S England, UK.

Southey was born at Bristol on 12 August 1774, and died at his home near Keswick, Cumberland, on 21 March 1843.

English poet, born in Cockermouth, Cumberland. One of the great English poets, he was a leader of the romantic movement in England.