The Romantic
Period
1785-1830
The House of Hanover
George III
r. 1760-1820
George III,
portrait by Johann Zoffany (1733/4-1810)
© Royal Collection
 1st Hanoverian king born in
England
 American colonies lost during his
reign
 Good family man: 15 children
 Highly cultured
1768: founded Royal Academy of
Arts
65,000 of his books went to
British Museum
 “Farmer George” – interested in
botany and agriculture
 Mental derangement, perhaps
caused by porphyria, led to Regency
under his son (later George IV) in
1811.
George IV
r.1820-30
 Prince Regent 1811-1820:
final victory in Napoleonic Wars at
Battle of Waterloo – June 1815
 Known for extravagant lifestyle
 Illegally married a Catholic
widow, Maria Fitzherbert, 1785
 Married Caroline of Brunswick,
1795 – disastrous
 Catholic Emancipation 1829 over
the king’s protests
Portrait of George IV of the
United Kingdom in the robes of
the Order of the Garter as Prince
Regent, 1816, by Sir Thomas
Laurence.
William IV
r. 1830-37
 Joined navy as young man,
served as Lord Admiral:
“the Sailor King”
 His reign saw major reforms:
 the poor law updated
 municipal government
democratised
 child labour restricted
 slavery abolished
throughout the British
Empire
 Reform Act of 1832
refashioned the British
electoral system
Queen
Victoria
r. 1837-1901
Portrait of Queen
Victoria in her
Coronation robes
and wearing the
State Diadem, by
Franz Xavier
Winterhalter
The Royal
Collection © 2006,
Her Majesty Queen
Elizabeth II
ROMANTIC
REVOLUTIONS
Industrial Revolution
 Power-driven machinery replaced hand
labor
 1765: James Watt – the steam engine
 Industry moved from homes and workshops
to factories
 Population moved from agricultural
countryside to industrial cities
 Enclosure of “commons” into large farms
and privately owned estates
 Laissez faire economic policy – free
operation of economic laws –governmental
non-interference
1776: Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
Political
Revolutions
American Revolution
1775-1783
Colonies’ alliance with France
 1776: Declaration of Independence
Broad intellectual and social shifts
 republican ideals: liberty and rights as central values,
rejects aristocracy and inherited political power, expects
citizens to be independent and calls on them to perform civic
duties.
 liberal democracy: representative democracy (with free
and fair elections) along with the protection of minorities,
the rule of law, a separation of powers, and protection of
liberties (thus the name liberal) of speech, assembly,
religion, and property.
 1787: Constitution and Bill of Rights
 Quaker
 Met Ben Franklin in London –
who advised him to move to
America
 1776: Common Sense: attacked
British monarchy and argued for
American independence
 1787: Returned to Britain
 1791: The Rights of Man: proposed
universal male suffrage,
progressive taxes, family
allowances, old age pensions,
maternity grants and abolition of
House of Lords
 1792: Became a French citizen and
elected to National Convention –
opposed execution of Louis XVI
 1794: Age of Reason: questioned
truth of Old Testament and
Christianity
 1802: returned to America
Tom Paine
1737-1809
Auguste Milliere, Thomas Paine
National Portrait Gallery, London
French Revolution and Napoleon
1789-1815
 1789: Fall of Bastille and Declaration of the Rights of Man
 1792: September Massacres of imprisoned nobility
 1793: The Reign of Terror
 Execution of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette
 France declared war against Britain
 1794: Fall of Robespierre
 1804: Napoleon crowned Emperor of France
 1815: Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo
Edmund Burke  Anglo-Irish statesman and
philosopher
1729-97
Joshua Reynolds, Edmund Burke
Scottish National Portrait Gallery
 1765-94: Whig member of
House of Commons
 Opposed absolute
monarchy and supported
American colonies against
the king
1790: Reflections on the
Revolution in France: saw
French Revolution as a
violent rebellion against
tradition which would end
in disaster.
 1790: Vindication of
the Rights of Men:
response to Burke in
defense of the ideals of
the French Revolution
 1792: A Vindication of
the Rights of Women
 1794: An Historical
and Moral View of the
French Revolution
Mary
Wollstonecraft
1759-97
Official British Reaction to the
French Revolution and Napoleon
 Curtailment of civil liberties and harsh
repression
 suspension of the writ of habeus corpus
 advocates of political change charged
with treason
 1791: Rejection of a bill to abolish the
slave trade
 1793: Declaration of war against France
 1805-15: Napoleonic Wars
Intellectual
Revolutions
Mary
Wollstonecraft
1759-97
 Professional
writer, philosopher
and feminist
 1797: married
William Godwin
 Died of childbirth
fever – after giving
birth to Mary
Wollstonecraft
Godwin (Shelley)
Writings by Mary Wollstonecraft
 Thoughts on the Education of
Daughters (1787)
 Mary: A Fiction (1788)
 Original Stories from Real Life
(1788)
 Of the Importance of Religious
Opinions (1788) (translation)
 The Female Reader (1789)
(anthology)
 Young Grandison (1790)
(translation)
 Elements of Morality (1790)
(translation)
 A Vindication of the Rights of Men
(1790)
 A Vindication of the Rights of
Woman (1792)
 An Historical and Moral View of the
French Revolution (1794)
 Letters Written during a Short
Residence in Sweden, Norway
and Denmark (1796)
 Contributions to the Analytical
Review (1788-1797) (published
anonymously)
 The Cave of Fancy (1798,
published posthumously;
fragment)
 Maria, or The Wrongs of Woman
(1798, published posthumously;
unfinished)
 Letters to Imlay (1798, published
posthumously)
 Letters on the Management of
Infants (1798, published
posthumously; unfinished)
 Lessons (1798, published
posthumously; unfinished)
Original Stories
from Real Life
 1788 Children’s book by Mary
Wollstonecraft
 Engraved illustrations by William
Blake
 Original Stories is primarily about
leaving the imperfections of
childhood behind and becoming a
rational and sympathetic adult.
Throughout the text, Wollstonecraft
emphasizes the balance of reason
and sympathy.
Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the
Rights of Women, 1792
 Advocated equal education, egalitarian marriage, and full
citizenship for women
 Primary Importance of Education:
“As a proof that education gives this appearance of weakness
to females, we may instance the example of military men, who
are, like them, sent into the world before their minds have been
stored with knowledge or fortified by principles. The
consequences are similar; soldiers acquire a little superficial
knowledge, snatched from the muddy current of conversation,
and, from continually mixing with society, they gain, what is
termed a knowledge of the world; and this acquaintance with
manners and customs has frequently been confounded with a
knowledge of the human heart. But can the crude fruit of
casual observation . . . deserve such a distinction? Soldiers, as
well as women, practice the minor virtues with punctilious
politeness. Where is then the sexual difference, when the
education has been the same? . . . . ”
William Godwin
1756-1836
 Journalist, political
philosopher and novelist
 Founder of philosophical
anarchism
 1793: An Enquiry Concerning
Political Justice
 1794: Things as They Are or
the Adventures of Caleb
Williams – first mystery novel
 1799: Fleetwood. or The New
Man of Feeling
 1817: Mandeville
 1797: married Mary
Wollstonecraft
 1801: married Mary Jane
Clairmont
 Championed individual
against coercive government
The “Wollstonecraft Scandal”
 1789: William Godwin published Memoirs of the
Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman and
Wollstonecraft’s Letters to Imlay after
Wollstonecraft’s death
The works revealed Mary Wollstonecraft’s affair
with Gilbert Imlay, her suicide attempts, and her
rejection of Christianity
 Ruined her reputation for decades: “Wollstonecraft
was now branded as a whore and an atheist, and
other women who dared to show sympathy with her
ideas could not expect to escape calumny.” –
Margaret Kirkham, Jane Austen, Feminism and
Fiction
Godwin-Wollstonecraft Family
CLASSICISM vs.
ROMANTICISM
Neo-Classicism vs
 Greek/Roman influence
 Emphasis on Society
 Age of Reason
Rationality
Philosophy
Deism
 Euro-centric
 Cities
 Enlightenment
Science
Romanticism
 Medieval/Oriental influence
 Emphasis on Individual
 Age of Passion
Emotion
Imagination
Spirituality
 Interest in the Exotic
 Nature: pastoral and wild
 Revolution
Social Justice
NATURE
Neo-Classical
Romantic
Universal
Subject to human control
Gardens
Source of peace and
tranquillity
Untamed nature:
dangerous/evil
Particular
Beyond human control
Mountains, oceans,
forests
Source of inspiration
and spirituality
Untamed nature:
exhilarating/sublime
LOVE
Neo-Classical
Romantic
Universal
Subject to human control
Marriage
Social Contract
Economic Contract
Attraction between
social and intellectual
equals
Source of peace and
tranquillity
Particular
Beyond human control
Passion
Individual choice
Search for soul-mate
Forbidden
attractions: social,
exotic, incestual
Source of inspiration,
exhilaration and despair
NeoClassical
Artist
Social
Arbiter of Taste
Elitist
Moral
Intellectual
Critic
Louis Michel van Loo Portrait of Diderot
Romantic
Artist
Loner
Unconventional
Amoral
Genius
Prophet
George Gordon Lord Byron
Romantic
Genres
Romantic Prose Genres
 Literary criticism
 The familiar essay
 The Novel
 Historical novels
 Novels of manners
 Novels of sensibility
 Gothic novels
Literary Criticism
William Hazlitt
Charles Lamb
 Literary critics became
the arbiters of taste
 Debate over the artistic
value as well as the
utilitarian value of
critical literature
 1802: Edinburgh
Review
 1809: Quarterly
Review
Thomas DeQuincy
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Familiar Essay
William Hazlitt
Charles Lamb
 Intimate
commentaries in which
the essayist reveals
his/her own feelings on
a wide range of subjects
 Idiosyncratic and
eccentric
 The typical familiar
essay, whatever its
theme, seemed to carry
the reader into a
personal conversation
with an intelligent and
learned writer
Thomas DeQuincy
Leigh Hunt
Jane Austen and
the Novel of Manners
 Novels dominated by the customs,
manners, conventional behavior and
habits of a particular social class
 Often concerned with courtship and
marriage
 Realistic and sometimes satiric
 Focus on domestic society rather
than the larger world
 Other novelists of manners:
Anthony Trollope, Edith Wharton,
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Margaret
Drabble
Historical
Novels
 Novels that reconstruct a
past age, often when two
cultures are in conflict
 Fictional characters interact
with with historical figures
in actual events
 Sir Walter Scott (17711832) is considered the
father of the historical
novel: The Waverly Novels
(1814-1819) and Ivanhoe
(1819)
Gothic Novels
 Novels characterized by magic,
mystery and horror
 Exotic settings – medieval,
Oriental, etc.
 Originated with Horace
Walpole’s Castle of Otranto
(1764)
 William Beckford: Vathek, An
Arabian Tale (1786)
 Anne Radcliffe: 5 novels (178997) including The Mysteries of
Udolpho
 Widely popular genre throughout
Europe and America: Charles
Brockden Brown’s Wieland
(1798)
 Contemporary Gothic novelists
include Anne Rice and Stephen
King
Frankenstein
by Mary Shelley
1797-1851
 Inspired by a dream in reaction to a
challenge to write a ghost
story
 Published in
1817
(rev. ed. 1831)
 A Gothic novel
influenced by
Promethean myth
 The first science
fiction novel
The Brontës
Charlotte (1816-55), Emily (1818-48), Anne (1820-49)
 Wuthering Heights and Jane
Eyre transcend sentiment into
myth-making
 Wuthering Heights plumbs
the psychic unconscious in a
search for wholeness, while
Jane Eyre narrates the female
quest for individuation
 Brontë.info: website of
Brontë Society and Haworth
Parsonage
 The Victorian Web
portrait by Branwell Brontë of his sisters,
Anne, Emily, and Charlotte (c. 1834)
English
Romantic
Theatre
 Closet drama: drama meant more to be read than performed
 Prominent in the early 19th c. when melodrama and burlesque
dominated the theater, and poets attempted to raise dramatic
standards:
 Joanna Baillie: Plays on the Passions, 1798-1812
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Remorse, 1813
 George Gordon Lord Byron: Manfred, 1817
 Percy Bysshe Shelley’s The Cenci and Prometheus Unbound,
1819
 Robert Browning’s Strafford (1837) and Pippa Passes (1841)
Lyric Poetry
 Search for an authentic language of feeling rather than
artifice
 Wordsworth: “the spontaneous overflow of powerful
feelings recollected in tranquility”
 1st person voice of the poem – during this period usually
associated with the poet – sometimes biographical and
confessional
 Revived older poetic forms:
 blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter
 the sonnet: 14 lines of iambic pentameter
 the ballad: mixed narrative story with lyrical description
 the ode: poem of praise – new kinds of subjects
 occasional poem: usually political, often satirical
 sentimental poem: commentary on personal events, such as the
birth of a child
Charlotte Smith
Anna Letitia Barbauld
Female
Pioneers
Mary Robinson
Poet, Educator, Activist, Editor
1773: Poems and Pieces in Prose
 1774: Married Rochemont
Barbauld – school at Palgrave
 Poetry:
Anna Letitia
Barbauld
1743-1825
Devotional Pieces (1775)
Political and domestic poems
 Children’s literature:
Lessons for Children (1778-79, 4 vols)
Hymns in Prose for Children (1781)
Evenings at Home (1792-96, 6 vols)
 Editor:
The British Novelists (1810, 50 vols.)
The Female Speaker (1811)
1775 Wedgewood Cameo
Charlotte Turner Smith
1749-1806
Poet, Novelist, Activist
Poetry:
Revived sonnet form
Elegiac Sonnets (1785-1801, 9 eds.)
The Emigrants (1793)
Beachy Head (1807)
Novels:







Emmeline (1788)
Ethelinde, (1789)
Celestina (1791)
Desmond (1792)
The Old Manor House (1793) The Emigrants (1793)
The Wanderings of Warwick (1794)
The Banished Man (1794)
Montalbert (1795)
Marchmont (1796)
The Young Philosopher (1798)
The Letters of a Solitary Wanderer (1800)
Mary Darby
Robinson
ca. 1757-1800
 Actress, poet, novelist
 Poetry
 Poems (2 vols. 1775)
 Poems (1791)
 Sappho and Phaon (1796)
Petrarchan sonnet sequence
 Lyrical Tales (1800)
 7 Novels, including:
 Vacenza (1792)
 The Widow (1794)
 Angelina (1796)
 Walsingham (1797)
 Memoirs (1801)
Gainsborough, 1781
 The first of the great English Romantic poets,
as well as a painter and printer, and engraver.
 Illuminated books:
 c.1788: All Religions Are One
and There Is No Natural Religion
 1789: Songs of Innocence and Thel
 1790–1793: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
 1793: Visions of the Daughters of Albion
and America: a Prophecy
 1794: Europe: a Prophecy, The First Book of
Urizen and Songs of Experience
 1795: The Book of Los
 The Song of Los and The Book of Ahania
 c.1804–c.1811: Milton: a Poem
 1804–1820: Jerusalem
 Non-Illuminated
 1783: Poetical Sketches
 1789: Tiriel
 1791: The French Revolution
 1797: The Four Zoas
William Blake
1757-1827
Lyrical Ballads,
1798, 1800, 1802
 Poems by William Wordsworth
and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
 Heralds the beginning of the
Romantic Period in England
 Poetry that uses normal, everyday
language
 Emphasis on the voice of the
living poet
 “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.”
Title Page of the 1st Edition
Keats
Coleridge
The Poet as
Rock Star
Shelley
Wordsworth
Byron