A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century

Before 'Romanticism' had become a fixed category, Henry A. Beers set out to trace its emergence and flowering in nineteenth-century England. Written at the turn of the twentieth century, this scholarly volume offers a careful reckoning with the movement that fundamentally redefined English literature - its roots in the reaction against Classicism, its embrace of medieval inheritance, and its passionate dialogue with nature, imagination, and the individual self. Beers maps the terrain through figures like Walter Scott, whose historical novels reconnected English letters with the national past, and the Lake Poets, whose mystical union with nature and exploration of the creative imagination shaped the Romantic sensibility. The work addresses the definitional challenges inherent in any study of 'Romanticism' - the difficulty of confining a movement so various in its expressions to a single formula. What emerges is a portrait of a literary revolution: the casting off of Enlightenment rationalism in favor of feeling, intuition, and the sublime. This remains essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how nineteenth-century England invented a new way of being in the world through its poetry and prose.