A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century

The work surveys how nineteenth‑century English letters turned deliberately toward the Middle Ages, reshaping the nation’s literary imagination. Beginning where an earlier study left off, it maps the shift from the “beginnings” of Romantic thought to a confident revival that dominates the period’s prose and poetry. The author argues that this medieval turn is the defining thread, more than lyricism or ego‑centrism, and uses that lens to trace the era’s major currents.

Drawing on a wide range of writers still familiar to educated readers—Walter Scott’s narrative vigor, Coleridge’s visionary myth‑making, Keats’s sensual lyric, and the broader Gothic and historical imagination—the book offers a tightly selected yet representative panorama. Its clear, argumentative style foregrounds the debates over what “Romantic” truly means, inviting listeners to reconsider the age not as a single movement but as a rich tapestry of revived chivalry, faith, and national myth.