FICTION
Bunyan[1]
Defoe
Fénelon
Fielding
Goldsmith
Johnson
Le Sage
Sterne
Swift
HISTORY &
ORATORY
Burke
Gibbon
ESSAY &
BIOG.
Addison
Boswell
Steele
Voltaire
DRAMA
Calderon
Lessing
Molière
Racine
Sheridan
RELIGION &
PHILOSOPHY
Browne[1]
Bunyan[1]
Herbert[1]
Kant
Smith, A.
Watts
Wesley
The Age of Romanticism. 1776–1832. The Revolution in America, soon followed by that in France, is the historical sign of the passing of the aristocratic spirit of classicism. Freedom, equality, the destruction of the bondage that had held the common people back from education and advancement, these are the new ideas. In literature as in life a reaction broke out against the formal, stilted, unemotional style of classicism. Wordsworth and Byron in England, Rousseau in France, and Goethe and Schiller in Germany were the leaders in the intellectual activity. Their writings and their principles were directly opposed to their predecessors. Liberty, instead of convention; free expression of passion and feeling, in the place of cold reasoning; individual expression instead of imitation and studied restraint; simple words and direct, clear statement in the place of an affected and artificial style; a love for the wild and picturesque in scenery rather than for the smooth and cultivated parks of the past century. Contrast Byron with Pope, or Scott's novels with Johnson's "Rasselas" to see the radical difference in tone.
This outburst of freedom and self-expression meant progress. To increase the advance, steam and machinery came into use; just as printing accomplished marvels in the days of the Renaissance, so now there was again a blaze of creative genius and inventiveness. National education at the expense of the state and the growth of newspapers and magazines put rich and poor, noble and peasant more nearly on a level than any bloodshed or lawmaking could ever have done.
POETRY
Blake
Burns
Byron
Coleridge
Keats
Musset
Shelley
Uhland
Wordsworth
FICTION
Chateaubriand
Fouqué
Hugo
Manzoni
Scott
ESSAY
De Quincey
Hazlitt
Heine
Lamb
Richter
Southey