The Romantic Era

According to most scholars, the Romantic Period in England began when Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth published Lyrical Ballads in 1798. The image I chose to represent this era is an illustration that was drawn up for a later version of “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, which was one of the works that was first published in Lyrical Ballads. It was a movement that effected literature when it caused people to think about how things were better before the Industrial Revolution began in 1760 (Adam Zeidan The First Industrial Revolution). Nature was being negatively impacted by the encroaching landscape of factories, and people were sick of it. The focus on this and on the past resulted in a complete rewrite of what was acceptable in published literature of the time. The gothic genre was invented. Run-on sentences, sentence fragments, and pathetic fallacy were more commonly accepted as stylistic choices rather than illogical acts. Ann Radcliffe used these practices in her own work, including On the Supernatural.

Associated Place(s)

Event date:

1798