Romantic literature in English

Romanticism was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century. Scholars regard the publishing of William Wordsworth's and Samuel Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads in 1798 as probably the beginning of the movement in England, and the crowning of Queen Victoria in 1837 as its end.^[1] Romanticism arrived in other parts of the English-speaking world later; in the United States, about 1820.

The Romantic period was one of social change in England because of the depopulation of the countryside and the rapid growth of overcrowded industrial cities between 1798 and 1832. The movement of so many people in England was the result of two forces: the Agricultural Revolution, which involved enclosures that drove workers and their families off the land; and the Industrial Revolution, which provided jobs "in the factories and mills, operated by machines driven by steam-power".^[2] Indeed, Romanticism may be seen in part as a reaction to the Industrial Revolution,^[3] though it was also a revolt against the aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment, as well as a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature.^[4] The French Revolution had an important influence on the political thinking of many Romantic figures at this time as well.^[5]