British Romanticism

An introduction to the poetic revolution that brought common people to literature’s highest peaks.

“[I]f Poetry comes not as naturally as the Leaves to a tree it had better not come at all,” proposed John Keats
in an 1818 letter, at the age of 22. This could be called romantic in sentiment, lowercase r, meaning fanciful,
impractical, unachievably ambitious. But Keats’s axiom could also be taken as a one-sentence distillation of
British Romanticism—with its all-or-nothing stance on the spontaneity of the highest art, its conviction of
the sympathetic connections between nature’s organic growth and human creativity, and its passion for
individual imagination as an originating force. This period is generally mapped from the first political and
poetic tremors of the 1780s to the 1832 Reform Act. No major period in English-language literary history is
shorter than that half-century of the Romantic era, but few other eras have ever proved as consequential.
Romanticism was nothing short of a revolution in how poets understood their art, its provenance, and its
powers: ever since, English-language poets have furthered that revolution or formulated reactions against it.
In Britain, Romanticism was not a single unified movement, consolidated around any one person, place,
moment, or manifesto, and the various schools, styles, and stances we now label capital-R Romantic would
resist being lumped into one clear category. Yet all of Romanticism’s products exploded out of the same set
of contexts: some were a century in the making; others were overnight upheavals. Ushered in by revolutions
in the United States (1776) and France (1789), the Romantic period coincides with the societal
transformations of the Industrial Revolution, the rise of liberal movements and the state’s
counterrevolutionary measures, and the voicing of radical ideas—Parliamentary reform, expanded suffrage,
abolitionism, atheism—in pamphlets and public demonstrations. Though Britain avoided an actual
revolution, political tensions sporadically broke out into traumatizing violence, as in the Peterloo massacre
of 1819, in which state cavalry killed at least 10 peaceful demonstrators and wounded hundreds more.
Emboldened by the era’s revolutionary spirit, Romantic poets invented new literary forms to match.
Romantic poetry can argue radical ideas explicitly and vehemently (as in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “England
in 1819,” a sonnet in protest of Peterloo) or allegorically and ambivalently (as in William Blake’s “The
Tyger,” from Songs of Innocence and of Experience). To quote from William Wordsworth’s preface
to Lyrical Ballads, the groundbreaking collection he wrote with fellow poet-critic Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
Romantic poets could “choose incidents and situations from common life” as its subjects, describing them
not in polished or high-flown diction but instead in everyday speech, “a selection of language really used by
men.” Romanticism can do justice to the disadvantaged, to those marginalized or forgotten by an
increasingly urban and commercial culture—rural workers, children, the poor, the elderly, or the disabled—
or it can testify to individuality simply by foregrounding the poet’s own subjectivity at its most idiosyncratic
or experimental.
Alongside prevailing political and social ideas, Romantic poets put into practice new aesthetic theories,
cobbled from British and German philosophy, which opposed the neoclassicism and rigid decorum of 18th-
century poetry. To borrow the central dichotomy of critic M.H. Abrams’s influential book The Mirror and
the Lamp (1953), Romantic poets broke from the past by no longer producing artistic works that merely
mirrored or reflected nature faithfully; instead, they fashioned poems that served as lamps illuminating
truths through self-expression, casting the poets’ subjective, even impressionistic, experiences onto the
world. From philosophers such as Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant, the Romantics inherited a distinction
between two aesthetic categories, the beautiful and the sublime—in which beautiful suggests smallness,
clarity, and painless pleasure, and sublime suggests boundlessness, obscurity, and imagination-stretching
grandeur. From the German critic A.W. Schlegel, Coleridge developed his ideal of “organic form,” the unity
found in artworks whose parts are interdependent and integral to the whole—grown, like a natural organism,
according to innate processes, not externally mandated formulas.
The most self-conscious and self-critical British poets to date, the Romantics justified their poetic
experimentations in a variety of prose genres (prefaces, reviews, essays, diaries, letters, works of
autobiography or philosophy) or else inside the poetry itself. But they never wrote only for other poets and
critics: the Romantics competed in a burgeoning literary marketplace that made room for the revival of
English and Scottish ballads (narrative folk songs, transcribed and disseminated in print), the recovery of
medieval romances (one etymological root of Romantic), and prose fiction ranging from the psychological
extremes of the gothic novel to the wit of Jane Austen’s social realism. Romantic poets looked curiously
backward—to Greek mythology, friezes, and urns or to a distinctly British cultural past of medieval ruins
and tales of knights and elves—to look speculatively forward. Perhaps no pre-Romantic author inspired the
Romantics more than William Shakespeare, who exemplified what Keats termed “Negative Capability, that
is when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after
fact & reason.” For Keats, “a great poet” such as Shakespeare opened his imagination to all possibilities,
limited neither by an insistent search for truth nor by his own egocentric gravity: “the sense of Beauty
overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.”
Drawing on unrestrained imagination and a variegated cultural landscape, a Romantic-era poem could be
trivial or fantastic, succinctly songlike or digressively meandering, a searching fragment or a precisely
bounded sonnet or ode, as comic as Lord Byron’s mock epic Don Juan or as cosmologically subversive as
Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. If any single innovation has emerged as Romanticism’s foremost
legacy, it is the dominance among poetic genres of the lyric poem, spoken in first-person (the lyric I) often
identified with the poet, caught between passion and reason, finding correspondences in natural
surroundings for the introspective workings of heart and mind. If any collection cemented that legacy, it
would be Wordsworth and Coleridge’s landmark collection Lyrical Ballads, first published anonymously in
1798. The collection provokes with its title alone, inverting hierarchies, hybridizing the exalted outbursts of
lyric poetry with the folk narratives of ballads. In a retrospective preface added for the 1800 second edition
and expanded in later editions, Wordsworth set out his polemical program for a poetry grounded in feeling,
supplying Romanticism with some of its most resonant and lasting phrases: “all good poetry is the
spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”; “it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.”
The following poems, poets, articles, poem guides, and recordings offer introductory samples of the
Romantic era. Included are the monumental Romantic poets often nicknamed “the Big Six”—the older
generation of Blake, Wordsworth, and Coleridge and the so-called Young Romantics—Byron, Shelley, and
Keats. Indispensable women poets such as Charlotte Smith, Mary Robinson, and Felicia Dorothea Hemans;
the Scottish poet and lyricist Robert Burns; and the farm laborer–poet John Clare are also represented. But
even this collection is only a beginning: no introduction to Romanticism can encompass the entire period in
all its variety and restless experimentation.
The Romantic Period encompassed poetic characteristics and visions completely different that anything seen
before, rebelling and breaking away from the conservative style of Neoclassicism that preceded it. The first
generation of Romantic poets mainly consisted of William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and
William Blake. Characteristics of the period such as mysticism are seen and expressed in their poems.

It isn’t possible to place a definite date on the start and end of the Romantic Period as there are several
conflicting opinions. Generally, it is regarded that the period began in 1798 with the publication of “Lyrical
Ballads” by the forefathers of Romanticism; Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth. Some
scholars argue that it began as early as 1789 with “Songs of Innocence” by William Blake. In terms of its
ending, some believe it ended with the start of the Victorian Era in 1837, although some say it died off by
1830. For the purpose of this essay, the consensus is that the period began in 1798 and ended in 1830.

With a timeframe established, it is critical to look at historical events of the time as they played a major role
in influencing the thoughts and styles of the Romantic poets. The Romantics were on the brink of the
Industrial Revolution which was seen as a negative, horrendous thing. The poets emphasized on the
importance of nature in life and society, seeing big, smoke expelling factories as monstrous and completely
unnatural. They feared that society would become corrupted and evil as it lost contact with nature and
further integrated to an industrialized life. The other main influence they had was the French Revolution
which helps explain where some of the new ideologies and feelings came from. There was little to no
expression of free speech in France and poverty was widespread. Resources were not distributed
appropriately as the nobles lived in great luxury while lower classes starved. Naturally, the romantics
supported the revolution hoping for social and political change and improvement in France. Later on, with
Napoleon’s rule and aggressive conquests they turned against the French movement but kept and embraced
the spirit of revolution. The revolution and their fear of being invaded made them truly appreciate what they
had. Nature was turned to to escape from the real world and its predicaments; it was a heavenly gateway to
peace of mind. Nature then became one of the most commonly used and important themes, references and
characteristics in romantic poetry as it came to symbolize God’s pure creation of grace.

The most important Romantic poets can be classified into two groups, the first generation and the second
generation. The first generation of poets that created the basis for the later ones included were Samuel
Coleridge (1772-1834), William Blake (1757-1827) and William Wordsworth (1770-1850) Charles Lamb
(1775-1834), Jane Austen (17751817), and Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832). Charles Lamb is most famous for
his poem “The Old Familiar Faces” and his essay “Essays of Elia.” At one point he was mentally ill and
spent some time in a psychiatric hospital. His sister went insane and stabbed their mother to death, greatly
affecting his writing for a long time and forcing him to take care of her. Jane Austen is most commonly
known for her novels “Sense and Sensibility” and “Pride and Prejudice.” Her novels were not accepted very
well and didn’t bring her much fame while she was alive, but now she has been accepted as one of the best
authors of the English language. “Northanger Abby” was published once she had passed away and sold
excellently for a year. Sir Walter Scott is known for his poems like “The Lady of The Lake” and his ballads.
He focused and showed an interest for Scottish history in his works. Scott was read all around the world
during his time including readers in parts of Europe and North America.

The most important second generation poets included Lord Byron (1788-1824), Percy Bysshe Shelley
(1792-1822), and John Keats (1795-1821). All three produced important literary works despite that they died
so young at the ages of 36, 30 and 26, respectively. Keats was the most famous of the three, praised for his
collection of odes including Ode to a Nightingale. Like Austen, Keats was not widely recognized during his
lifetime and then his works picked up popularity after he passed away. Shelley was a master of poetry who
wrote “Queen Mab” as well as the dramatic plays “The Cenci” and “Prometheus Unbound.” He married the
writer Mary Shelley who wrote the extremely famous novel “Frankenstein” and also helped edit and revise
his works. Among Lord Byron’s most popular poems are “She Walks in Beauty” and “Don Juan.” Lord
Byron was somewhat of a wild man, getting involved in several romantic ++++++affairs and large debts. He
fought for the Greeks in the Greek War of Independence which made him be seen as a national hero by
them. Eventually he died from a terrible fever.

The majority of the poems in Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems (1798) were written by William
Wordsworth, but a few were written by his friend and colleague, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Wordsworth
and Coleridge are considered two of the most important literary icons of their time and pioneers of the
Romantic Movement in literature. In fact, many scholars consider the publication of Lyrical Ballads to be
the start of the Romantic Era in England.

The Romantic period in European art lasted throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. The poems,
novels, and paintings from this era prioritize emotion and the experience of awe-inspiring and logic-
defying visions and events. In many ways, it was a reaction to the Industrial Revolution and the Age of
Enlightenment. While the artists of the Romantic period were not all necessarily actively hostile to reason,
they wished to beat back against the rationalization of the natural world, instead, appreciating nature for
its aesthetic beauty.

Some of the most famous poems found in Lyrical Ballads include Wordsworth’s "Strange fits of passion I
have known," "Lucy Gray," and "Anecdote for Fathers." Nevertheless, by far the most famous and well-
remembered poem in the collection is Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”

The narrator of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is an old seafaring gentleman who stops a guest on his
way to a wedding to tell a tale. According to the narrator, their ship departs and at first, the trip goes
exactly as planned. Soon, a storm blows the ship into the frigid waters surrounding Antarctica. Lost in the
cold and the storm, the ship finds its way out of an ice jam and the surrounding turbulent waters thanks to
an albatross flying nearby. An albatross is a very large seafaring bird.

Despite the bird's help in guiding the crew to safety, the narrator shoots and kills the bird with a crossbow.
At first, the rest of the crew approves of the narrator's decision to kill the bird, owing to a superstition that
albatrosses bring ill winds like the one that blew the crew and its ship so far South. However, the crew
soon begins to believe that the narrator made a grave mistake in killing the bird, thus inciting the wrath of
vengeful natural forces. These vengeful forces blow the ship to the equator. While it is warm there, it is
too calm for the ship to sail anywhere. It is stuck.

Here, Coleridge includes perhaps the most famous line of the poem: "Water, water, everywhere / Nor any
drop to drink." As the crew suffers from a horrible thirst, they attempt to appease the gods of nature by
forcing the narrator to wear the dead albatross around his neck, as a sort of trophy of shame.

Just when things could not get much worse, the crew encounters a Ghost Ship piloted by Death and a
ghastly, pale ghoul of a woman, termed, "Night-mare Life in Death." The implication, perhaps, is that the
woman represents a fate worse than death. Meanwhile, the two ghost ship passengers gamble over dice to
see whose souls they will claim. Death wins the souls of most the crew, but the lady eyes the narrator, in
her estimation, a much more valuable prize. She wins his soul, while Death wins the rest of the souls.

Rather than be released by death, the narrator watches as his crewmembers die; he feels that he is on the
brink of death due to his intense thirst. The eyes of the dead seem to judge him for his crime, and he feels
responsible for their grisly fate. It is not until the narrator expresses an admiration of the sea creatures
around him—creatures he previously denigrated as "slimy things"—that the albatross falls from his neck.
All around him, the crew's spirits rise, guiding the ship through supernatural means.

Finally, the narrator sees his homeland; the ship's spirits have departed and only the dead remain. He is
rescued by a hermit, a boat pilot, and the boat pilot's son. The narrator looks so frightful that when he
awakens and starts rowing, the son cries out, "The Devil knows how to row!" Despite reaching his
homeland safely, the narrator feels he must repent for his crime against the albatross and against nature by
wandering the land for the rest of his days, telling his story to anyone who will listen. While the listener is
annoyed at times throughout the story, he wakes up the following morning feeling like "a sadder and wiser
man."

At the time of its publication, William Wordsworth described the mission statement of Lyrical Ballads:
"The majority of the following poems are to be considered as experiments. They were written chiefly with
a view to ascertain how far the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is
adapted to the purpose of poetic pleasure." By exploring the lives of "simpler" or "uneducated" folks, and
by bemoaning the corruption of society on man's natural state of existence in the wild, Lyrical
Ballads was a profoundly influential work in shifting popular thought when it came to existing power
structures and class structures, particularly in the years prior to the French Revolution and other populist
revolutions in Europe and around the world.

Lyrical Ballads is a collection of poems written by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The
first volume was released in 1798 and contained twenty-three poems, four of which were composed by
Coleridge. Although Wordsworth wrote most of the poems, Coleridge is sometimes listed as the first author
—either because his name comes first alphabetically or because his The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is the
first poem in the volume.

The best explanation for the volume as a whole is the "Preface to Lyrical Ballads" that William Wordsworth
wrote for the 1800 edition. In that work, he explains what he and Coleridge were attempting to do with the
new type of poetry they introduced in Lyrical Ballads. They wanted to write poems that featured "the
language of men," that is, everyday language used by everyday people rather than the stilted poetic diction
that most poetry had used up until that time.

Their subject matter is various, yet all the poems display the poets' heightened imaginations. They also
wanted the characters in their poems to be common people, not members of the aristocracy or ancient
heroes. Yet they did not want to abandon the lyrical nature of poetry—the beauty of well-chosen words
arranged in metrical fashion. "Lyrical ballads" is appropriate nomenclature for their new type of poetry
because the poems maintain the lyrical nature of traditional poetry while adding the "common touch" of folk
ballads.

The most famous of Coleridge's poems to appear in the collection is the first one: The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner. This poem showcases all the elements the poetic duo wanted their poems to contain. The story is a
highly imaginative gothic tale of a sailor who contends with supernatural punishments for killing an
albatross. The main character of the ballad is a common man, the "ancient Mariner." The short-lined stanzas
and simple word choices make the poem fully accessible to the average reader. Without a doubt, the beauty
and rhythm of Coleridge's verse offers some of the most memorable lines written in English.
Lyrical Ballads, collection of poems, first published in 1798 by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William
Wordsworth, the appearance of which is often designated by scholars as a signal of the beginning of
English Romanticism. The work included Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and Wordsworth’s
“Tintern Abbey,” as well as many controversial common-language poems by Wordsworth, such as “The
Idiot Boy.” The “Preface” to the second edition (1800) contains Wordsworth’s famous definition of poetry as
the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” and his theory that poetry should be written in “the
language really used by men.”
Lyrical Ballads
Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems is a collection of poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel
Taylor Coleridge, first published in 1798 and generally considered to have marked the beginning of the
English Romantic movement in literature.[1] The immediate effect on critics was modest, but it became and
remains a landmark, changing the course of English literature and poetry. The 1800 edition is famous for
the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, something that has come to be known as the manifesto of Romanticism.[2]
Most of the poems in the 1798 edition were written by Wordsworth, with Coleridge contributing only four
poems to the collection (although these made about a third of the book in length), including one of his most
famous works, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
A second edition was published in 1800, in which Wordsworth included additional poems and
a preface detailing the pair's avowed poetical principles.[3] For another edition, published in 1802,
Wordsworth added an appendix titled Poetic Diction in which he expanded the ideas set forth in the preface.
[4]
A third edition was published in 1802,[5] with substantial additions made to its "Preface," and a fourth
edition was published in 1805.[6]
Content[edit]
Wordsworth and Coleridge set out to overturn what they considered the priggish, learned, and highly
sculpted forms of 18th-century English poetry and to make poetry accessible to the average person via verse
written in common, everyday language. These two major poets emphasise the vitality of the living voice
used by the poor to express their reality. This language also helps assert the universality of human emotions.
Even the title of the collection recalls rustic forms of art – the word "lyrical" links the poems with the
ancient rustic bards and lends an air of spontaneity, while "ballads" are an oral mode of storytelling used by
the common people.
In the 'Advertisement' included in the 1798 edition, Wordsworth explained his poetical concept:
The majority of the following poems are to be considered as experiments. They were written chiefly with a
view to ascertain how far the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted
to the purpose of poetic pleasure.[7]
If the experiment with vernacular language was not enough of a departure from the norm, the focus on
simple, uneducated country people as the subject of poetry was a signal shift to modern literature. One of the
main themes of "Lyrical Ballads" is the return to the original state of nature, in which people led a purer and
more innocent existence. Wordsworth subscribed to Rousseau's belief that humanity was essentially good
but was corrupted by the influence of society. This may be linked with the sentiments spreading through
Europe just prior to the French Revolution.
Poems in the first edition (1798)[edit]
Poems marked "(Coleridge)" were written by Coleridge; all the other poems were written by Wordsworth. In
the first edition (1798) there were nineteen poems written by Wordsworth and four poems by Coleridge.
 The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere (Coleridge)
 The Foster-Mother’s Tale (Coleridge)
 Lines left upon a Seat in a Yew-tree which stands near the Lake of Esthwaite
 The Nightingale, a Conversational Poem (Coleridge)
 The Female Vagrant
 Goody Blake and Harry Gill
  Lines written at a small distance from my House, and sent by my little Boy to the Person to whom they ar
 Simon Lee, the old Huntsman
 Anecdote for Fathers
 We are seven
 Lines written in early spring
 The Thorn
 The last of the Flock
 The Dungeon (Coleridge)
 The Mad Mother
 The Idiot Boy
 Lines written near Richmond, upon the Thames, at Evening
 Expostulation and Reply
 The Tables turned; an Evening Scene, on the same subject
 Old Man travelling
 The Complaint of a forsaken Indian Woman
 The Convict
 Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey
Poems in the second edition (1800)[edit]
Poems marked "(Coleridge)" were written by Coleridge; all the other poems were written by Wordsworth.
Volume I[edit]

 Expostulation and Reply

 The Tables Turned; an Evening Scene, on the Same Subject
 Old Man Travelling; Animal Tranquillity and Decay, a Sketch
 The Complaint of a Forsaken Indian Woman
 The Last of the Flock
 Lines Left upon a Seat in a Yew-tree which Stands Near the Lake of Esthwaite
 The Foster-Mother's Tale (Coleridge)
 Goody Blake and Harry Gill
 The Thorn
 We are Seven
 Anecdote for Fathers
 Lines Written at a Small Distance from My House and Sent Me by My little Boy to the Person to
whom They Are Addressed
 The Female Vagrant
 The Dungeon (Coleridge)
 Simon Lee, the Old Huntsman
 Lines Written in Early Spring
 The Nightingale, written in April 1798. (Coleridge)
 Lines Written When Sailing in a Boat at Evening
 written Near Richmond, Upon the Thames
 The Idiot Boy
 Love (Coleridge)
 The Mad Mother
 The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Coleridge)
 Lines Written Above Tintern Abbey
Volume II[edit]

 Hart-Leap Well
 There Was a Boy, &c.
  The Brothers, a Pastoral Poem
 Ellen Irwin, or the Braes of Kirtle
 Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known, &c.
 Song
 She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways
 A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal, &c.
 The Waterfall and the Eglantine
 The Oak and the Broom, a Pastoral
 Lucy Gray
 The Idle Shepherd-Boys or Dungeon-Gill Force, a Pastoral
 'Tis said that some have died for love, &c.
 Poor Susan
 Inscription for the Spot where the Hermitage Stood on St Herbert's Island, Derwent-Water
 Inscription for the House (an Out-house) on the Island at Grasmere
 To a Sexton
 Andrew Jones
 The Two Thieves, or the Last Stage of Avarice
 A Whirl-blast from Behind the Hill, &c.
 Song for the Wandering Jew
 Ruth
 Lines Written with a Slate-Pencil upon a Stone, &c.
 Lines Written on a Tablet in a School
 The Two April Mornings
 The Fountain, a Conversation
 Nutting
 Three Years She Grew in Sun and Shower, &c.
 The Pet-Lamb, a Pastoral
 Written in Germany on One of the Coldest Days of the Century
 The Childless Father
 The Old Cumberland Beggar, a Description
 Rural Architecture
 A Poet's Epitaph
 A Character
 A Fragment
 Poems on the Naming of Places
 Michael, a Pastoral
For the 1800 edition Wordsworth added the poems that make up Volume II. The poem The
Convict (Wordsworth) was in the 1798 edition, but Wordsworth omitted it from the 1800 edition, replacing
it with Coleridge's "Love". Lewti or the Circassian Love-chaunt (Coleridge) exists in some 1798 editions in
place of The Convict. In the 1798 edition the poems later printed as "Lines Written When Sailing in a Boat
at Evening" and "Lines Written Near Richmond, Upon the Thames" form a single poem, "Lines Written
Near Richmond, Upon the Thames, at Evening".