The Romantic Age saw a new creative spirit emerge in English literature as exemplified by the poetry of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats. Writers of this period expressed enthusiasm for ideals of freedom and an ideal commonwealth. The essence of Romanticism was that literature should reflect spontaneity in nature and humanity. Poets like Wordsworth and Coleridge invested ordinary life and people with profound significance. While Scott, Byron, and Shelley had large audiences, Coleridge and Wordsworth best represented the Romantic genius. This was also an age of poetry, though some writers like Coleridge and Southey wrote more prose. Women also began to find success as

1. THE ROMANTIC AGE
Literary characteristics of the age

2. LITERARY CHARACTERISTICS
 It is about that how literature suddenly developed a
new creative spirit, which shows itself in the poetry
of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats
and in the prose of Scott, Jane Austen, Lamb and
De Quincey – a wonderful group of writers, whose
patriotic enthusiasm suggests the Elizabethan
days.

3. ROMANTIC ENTHUSIASM
 An ideal commonwealth, in which
the principles of More’s ‘Utopia’
should be put in practice. Even
Wordsworth, fired with political
enthusiasm, could write,
‘ Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven’.
- Wordsworth

4.  The essence of Romanticism was, that literature
must reflect all that is spontaneous and unaffected
in nature and man, and be free to follow its own
fancy in its own way. In Coleridge we see this
independence expressed in ‘ Kubla khan’ and ‘The
Ancient Mariner’, two dream pictures, one of the
popular Orient, the other of the lonley sea. In
Wordsworth this literary independence led him
inward to the heart of common things as in this line,
‘Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything ‘.

5.  He invests the common
life of nature, and the
souls of common men
and women, with
glorious significance.
These two poets,
Coleridge and
Wordsworth, best
represent the romantic
genius of the age in
which they lived,
though Scott had a
greater literary
reputation, and Byron
and Shelley had larger
audiences.

6. AN AGE OF POETRY
 In the Elizabethan age, the
young enthusiasts turned as
naturally to poetry as a
happy man to singing. The
glory of the age is in the
poetry of Scott, Wordsworth,
Coleridge, Byron, Shelley,
Keats, Moore and Southey.
Coleridge and Southey
wrote far more prose than
poetry; and Southey’s prose
is much better than his
verse. He could say that, in
order to earn money, he
wrote in verse.

7. WOMEN AS NOVELISTS
 During this period that woman assumed ,
for the first time, an important place in
our literature . The chief reason that,
woman was for the first time given some
slight chance of education, of entering
into the intellectual life of the race. A
secondary reason may be found in the
nature of the age itself, which was
intensely emotional. As woman is
naturally more emotional than man, it
may well be that the spirit of this
emotional age attracted her and gave
her the opportunity to express herself in
literature. Like Jane Austen, Mrs. Anne
Radcliffe, Hannah More, Jane Porter.

8. THE MODERN MAGAZINES
 In this age literary criticism became firmly
established by the appearance of such
magazines as, “ Edinburgh
Review(1802), The Quarterly Review
(1808), Blackwood’s Magazine (1817),
Westminster Review(1824), The
Spectator (1828), The Atheneum (1828)
and Fraser’s Magazine (1830)”. These
magazines edited by such men as
Francis Jeffrey, John Wilson and John
Gibson Lockhart. They discovered the
chief mission of the modern magazine,
which is to give every writer of ability the
opportunity to make his work known to
the world.

9. REFERENCES
 English literature by William J. Long.
 Images from internet.