A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century

Written in the twilight of the nineteenth century, when the Romantics themselves had become history, this volume offers a scholar's reckoning with the movement that rewired English literature's imagination. Henry A. Beers approaches his subject with the particular advantage of temporal distance: he can see what the Romantics themselves could not, namely the shape of their collective achievement. The book maps the gradual emergence of Romanticism from its roots in medieval sensibility and its rebellion against Classical formality, tracing how English writers forged something distinct from their Continental neighbors. Beers examines the cultural shifts, the philosophical influences, and the individual geniuses who transformed poetry from politeness into passion. His analysis illuminates why English Romanticism, for all its mystical tendencies, remained stubbornly rooted in nature, emotion, and individual consciousness. For students of literature, this book serves as a rigorous introduction to the foundations of modern poetic thought, written in an era when the discipline of literary history was itself being invented.