When we read the Romantics now, they seem old-fashioned. They say things like, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty/ That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." Sounds fancy, right? To the mo...

The Romantics had a huge crush on nature. These guys (and sometimes gals) loved trees, flowers, mountains, clouds, crags, birds…you name it. As long as it was outdoors, they loved it. In nature,...

The Romantics loved to brood.They liked to sit, hunched over, clothes all disheveled, chin on hand, frowning, and thinking about Time. How quickly it goes by, how mysterious it is. Got that pictur...

The Romantics weren't conformists. No, they would be the kids in high school who wear strange clothes, listen to underground music, and don't hang out with anyone else. They're not trying to fit in...

Don Juan, Prometheus, Frankenstein's monster: these are all heroes who were made famous by the Romantics. The Romantics were great at creating larger-than-life, unforgettable heroes. And that's bec...

Boy were the Romantics a sentimental lot. A flower could move them to tears. An old Greek urn could set them brooding for hours. These writers were flat out obsessed with feelings. In fact, one of...

No, not Sense and Sensibility (although Austen was influenced by Romantics…but that's a story for another time). We're talking sense and sensuality. We'll find tons of sensory detail when we re...

"Sublime" is one slippery term.According to the Romantics, we experience the sublime when we're out in nature. But not just any nature—we have to be facing nature at its grandest, it's most awe-...

We're talking about British Romanticism, so what does the French Revolution have to do with it? A lot, actually. The French Revolution had huge repercussions not only in France, but all over Europ...

The industrial revolution, like the French Revolution, was bringing about lots of changes at the time that the Romantic poets began writing. More and more people were moving to the cities to work i...