This new interest in relatively unsophisticated but overtly emotional literary expressions of the past was to be a dominant note in Romanticism. Romanticism in English literature began in the 1790s with the publication of the Lyrical Ballads of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

The four major themes of Romanticism are emotion and imagination, nature, and social class. Romantic writers were influenced greatly by the evolving and changing world around them.

Any list of particular characteristics of the literature of romanticism includes subjectivity and an emphasis on individualism; spontaneity; freedom from rules; solitary life rather than life in society; the beliefs that imagination is superior to reason and devotion to beauty; love of and worship of nature; and …

The description Rousseau gave of his life, and the little reservations he had about retelling it, would have influenced the Romantic period greatly as his autobiography did not follow the societal rules and constructs of the Enlightenment period. …

Jean Jacques Rousseau

Romanticism, unlike the other “isms”, isn’t directly political. It is more intellectual. The term itself was coined in the 1840s, in England, but the movement had been around since the late 18th century, primarily in Literature and Arts. In England, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and Byron typified Romanticism.

Romantic poets are also called the early nineteenth- century poets. These poets revolted against the poetic tradition of the eighteenth century. They turned to the nature. Instead, they gave too much focus on emotion, imagination, originality and freedom in their poetry. …

Romanticism Top Authors

• William Wordsworth. We can’t talk about British Romanticism without talking about William Wordsworth, the father of the whole she-bang.
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Samuel Taylor Coleridge was William Wordsworth’s sidekick.
• Lord Byron.
• Percy Bysshe Shelley.
• William Blake.
• John Keats.
• Mary Shelley.