- Rebels and Dreamers -

1795 - William Wordsworth and

Samuel Coleridge
publish Lyrical Ballads

1812 - Byron publishes Childe
Harolds Pilgrimage

1813 - Jane Austen publishes
Pride and Prejudice


1818 - Mary Wollstonecraft
Shelley publishes
Frankenstein or The
Modern Prometheus
1819 - Percy Bysshe Shelley
writes Ode to the West
Wind
1820 - John Keats publishes
Ode on a Grecian Urn




1825 - Horse-drawn buses begin
operating in London

1825 - John Nash begins
rebuilding of Buckingham
Palace

1829 - Robert Peel establishes
Metropolitan Police in
London



1830 - Liverpool-Manchester
railway opens

1831 - Michael Faraday
demonstrates
electromagnetic induction

1832 - First Reform Act extends
voting rights




The literature of this period reflected
the effects of the American and French
Revolutions.
British leaders did not want France or
any other nation to win dominance on
the European continent.
The Tory government, led by William
Pitt (the Younger), banned all talk of
parliamentary reform outside the halls
of Parliament. (Banned public meetings
and suspended certain basic rights.)


Liberal-minded Britons had no political
outlet for their hopes and dreams,
therefore, many turned to literature
and art instead.
Throughout the long wars against
France, Britains government ignored
the problems caused by the industrial
revolution.
Overcrowded factory towns, unpleasant
and unsafe working conditions in the
factories, and long working hours for
low pay.




The working class grew steadily larger
and more restless resulting to series of
violent protests and riots.

Some attempted to organize into
unions.

Britains government sided openly
with the factory owners and even
helping to crush the workers attempts
to form unions.






During this time, the British society
was splitting into two angry camps
the working classes, who demanded
reform, and the ruling classes, who
fiercely resisted reform.

A new generation of Tories emerged in
the 1820s and reforms began.

A law was passed in 1824 permitting
Britains first labor unions to organize.







In 1829 The Catholic Emancipation
Act restored economic and religious
freedoms to Roman Catholics.

Then, in 1830, Whig party won the
election.

Their Reform Bill of 1832 brought
sweeping changes to British political
life.








By extending voting rights to the
small but important middle class
(males only), this law threatened the
traditional dominance of landowning
aristocrats in Parliament.

In 1833, Parliament passed the first
law governing factory safety.

In that same year, it also abolished
slavery.











Eighteenth-century writers focused on
celebrating the power of human
understanding

Classical art and literature showed the importance of
people and leaders, as well as gods and goddesses
Medieval art and literature focused on the Church and
salvation
Renaissance art and literature focused on the
importance of people and nature, along with religion

Romantic art and literature raised new
interest in the trials and dreams of the
common people and their desire for
radical change.










For the Romantics, THE FAITH IN
SCIENCE AND REASON, so
characteristic of eighteenth-century
thought and literature, was not
applicable in a world of tyranny and
factories.
Swiss-born writer Jean-Jacques
Rousseau (1712-1778), a leading
philosopher in France, influenced the
belief of the British Romantics.











Rousseau saw society as a force that,
throughout history, deformed and
imprisoned an originally free human
nature. Man is born free and
everywhere he is in chains. His ideas
influenced both American and French
revolutionaries.













Romanticism was a movement that
affected not only literature but also all
other arts.
In music, it produced such brilliant
European composers as Germanys Ludwig
Van Beethoven (1770-1827) and
Austrias Franz Schubert (1797-1828).
In painting, it influenced intensely
personal and warmly spontaneous rural
landscapes of Britains John Constable
(1776-1837) and the dramatic seascapes
of J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851)











William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
provided an early statement of
the goals of Romantic poetry in
the preface of Lyrical Ballads
(1798), a collaboration with his
friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(1772-1834).












Defined poetry as the spontaneous
overflow of powerful feelings and
explained that poetry takes its
origin from emotion recollected in
tranquility.
It was said that Wordsworth dealt
with the emphasis on emotions and
incidents and situations from common
life and believed that ordinary things
should be presented in an unusual
way.













Finally, Wordsworths preface
spoke about incorporating human
passions with the beautiful and
permanent forms of nature.
Viewed nature as not just a force
to be tamed and analyzed
scientifically; rather, it was a wild,
free force that could inspire poets
to instinctive spiritual
understanding.














Lyrical Ballads became the
cornerstone of Britains Romantic
Age.

Also with time, Wordsworth and
Coleridge became respected
members of Britains literary
establishment.


















Byron was a member of the
House of Lords.
At first, critics responded
unfavorably to his early poetry but
finally achieved success when he
published his first two cantos of
Childe Harolds Pilgrimage
(1812)















Handsome, egotistical and aloof,
Byron became the darling of
elegant society, but not for long.
Shocked by his radical politics and
scandalous love affairs, London
hostesses began to shun him.
Byron left Britain for Italy in
1816, never to return.















Byrons friend and was also an
aristocrat and a more consistent
political radical than Byron.
In poems such as Song to the
Men of England (1819), Shelley
urged Englands lower classes to
rebel.
















Like Byron, Shelley was shunned
for his radical ideas; he left Britain
for good in 1818.
In his lifetime, he did not attain
fame that Byron did yet he is now
remembered for the fervor he
brought to lyric poetry in such
intense personal and emotional
verses as To a Skylark (1820)
and Ode to the West Wind
















Also a master of lyrical poetry
Born outside upper-class society,
son of the London stable keeper
Trained to be a doctor but
abandoned his medical career to
pursue his passion for poetry













In 1819, produced his greatest
poems like The Fall of
Hyperion and Ode on a
Grecian Urn
In his poems, Keats tried to
reconcile the eternal and
almost inhuman beauty of art
with the realities of human
suffering.














The famous line at the end of
Ode on a Grecian Urn, Beauty is
truth, truth beauty -
represents one response to his
dilemma.
Unfortunately, Keats became ill
because of tuberculosis.
Hoping to get better in a
warmer climate, he traveled to
Italy, where he died at the age
of thirty-five.



















Less dominant than poetry
during the Romantic Age, but
many significant works
appeared, mainly in the form
of essays and novels.
Romantic Age was a dry
period for drama only two
theatres were licensed to
produce plays.


















British essayists and readers
of the Romantic Age.

















The London Magazine,
although it appeared from only
1820 to 1829, attracted major
contributions from the three
greatest essayists of the era.
Lamb, in particular, transformed
the informal essay of the
eighteenth-century into a more
personal, more introspective or
reflective Romantic composition.


















Author of, one of the most
successful Gothic novel during
the Romantic Age,
Frankenstein or The Modern
Prometheus (1818)

















Gothic novels first appeared in
the middle of the eighteenth
century.
It featured a number of
standard ingredients, including
brave heroes and heroines,
threatening scoundrels, vast
and eerie castles and ghosts.



















The fascination of the
Romantics with mystery and
the supernatural made such
novels quite popular during
that age.



















The most highly regarded
writer of novel manners,
turning a satirical eye on
British customs.
Her works include Sense and
Sensibility (1811) and Pride
and Prejudice (1813)




















Passionately devoted to his
native Scotland, used his
knowledge of Scottish history
to create what amounted to a
new literary form, the
Historical novel.




















Characterized by a focus on
historical events and settings,
with attention to local flavor
and regional speech.

It also featured a Romantic
treatment of realistic themes.