What inspired the iconic poetry of the Romantic period, and how did the Romantic poets portray landscape, class, radicalism and the sublime?
Songs of Innocence and of Experience contains two poems about young chimney sweepers: one in 'Innocence' and one in 'Experience'. Dr Linda Freedman considers how this allows for a complex, subtle engagement with the figure of the sweep.
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In his poem ‘London’ William Blake explores poverty, revolution and the power of the imagination. Dr Linda Freedman examines the original draft manuscript, to discover the meanings behind this iconic poem.
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The French Revolution inspired London radicals and reformers to increase their demands for change. Others called for moderation and stability, while the government tried to suppress radical activity. Professor Andrew Lincoln describes the political environment in which William Blake was writing.
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Michael Phillips compares the title page of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence to an earlier children’s book, in order to reveal Blake's progressive views on the importance and power of childhood.
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One of William Blake’s acquaintances described him singing his songs in social gatherings. Julian Walker considers how Blake intends us to understand the word ‘song’ – and why his volume of poetry is called Songs – rather than ‘Poems’ – of Innocence and Experience.
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George Norton shows how William Blake’s Chimney Sweeper poems highlight the injustice and brutality suffered by child chimney sweeps in the late 18th and 19th centuries.
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George Norton's close reading of William Blake’s 'The Tyger' considers the poem's imagery through 18th-century industrial and political revolutions and moral literature.
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Julian Walker looks at William Blake’s poetry in the context of 18th-century children’s literature, considering how the poems’ attitudes towards childhood challenge traditional ideas about moral education during that period.
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Dr Stephanie Forward explains the key ideas and influences of Romanticism, and considers their place in the work of writers including Wordsworth, Blake, P B Shelley and Keats.
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William Wordsworth’s poem ‘The Ruined Cottage’ tells the tale of a family torn apart by circumstances beyond their control. Professor Sally Bushell charts the decline of person through place in the poem.
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Professor Philip Shaw considers the composition of 'Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey', and explains how Wordsworth uses nature to explore ideas of connection and unity.
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Professor Philip Shaw explores the role of the sublime in Wordsworth's autobiographical Prelude, explaining how the poet uses the concept to investigate nature, imagination and the divine.
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Wordsworth’s vision of London’s serene beauty was composed on the roof of a coach – the poet was en route to France to meet his illegitimate daughter Caroline for the first time. Professor John Mullan explores the background to the poem.
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In August 1819 dozens of peaceful protestors were killed and hundreds injured at what became known as the Peterloo Massacre. Ruth Mather examines the origins, response and aftermath of this key early 19th century political event.
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Stephen Hebron looks at P B Shelley’s 'Ozymandias', showing how his use of form and vocabulary produce a poem that transcends its sources.
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Professor John Mullan analyses how Shelley transformed his political passion, and a personal grudge, into poetry.
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Keats is often seen as a purely sensual poet, isolated from the social and political concerns of his day. Andrew Motion challenges this view, exploring how Keats translated political, philosophical and medical questions into physical, immediate language.
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Stephen Hebron explores Keats’s understanding of negative capability, a concept which prizes intuition and uncertainty above reason and knowledge.
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What does Don Juan tell us about Byron’s view of society and his fellow authors? Dr Stephanie Forward explains what we can learn from the poem’s form, narrator and reception.
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P B Shelley's 'To a Skylark' was inspired by the song of a real skylark, heard in Italy in 1820. Stephen Hebron considers how Shelley transforms ordinary experience into a plea to move beyond that experience to a deeper poetic understanding.
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In the mid-18th century, childhood began to be viewed in a positive light, as a state of freedom and innocence. Professor Kimberley Reynolds explores how this new approach influenced 18th and 19th-century writers, some of whom wished they could preserve childhood indefinitely.
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Keats trained as an apothecary and a surgeon before deciding to dedicate himself to poetry. Professor Sharon Ruston considers how his medical background influenced his writing.
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Opium was widely available in the 19th century, sold by barbers, tobacconists and stationers. Writers including Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Charles Dickens all used the drug, for pleasure or as medicine. Professor Sharon Ruston explores how drugs provided both inspiration and subject matter for the literature of the period.
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In his poem ‘London’ William Blake explores poverty, revolution and the power of the imagination. Dr Linda Freedman examines the original draft manuscript, to discover the meanings behind this iconic poem.
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Poet Daljit Nagra explores Keats’s personification of nature in his final poem, ‘To Autumn’, and how it was influenced by the poet’s experience of suffering and loss.
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Professor Philip Shaw considers how Romantic writers thought about the grandest and most terrifying aspects of nature, and the ways in which their writing responded to and influenced theories of the sublime.
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What is melancholy? Stephen Hebron examines changing ideas about the emotion, considering Keats’s suggestion that we embrace melancholy as inextricable from pleasure.
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Stephen Hebron explains how a classical object inspired Keats’s consideration of human experience.
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The nightingale has longstanding literary associations, but Keats’s famous ode was inspired by a real-life nightingale as much as by previous poetry. Stephen Hebron considers how Keats uses the bird to position poetic imagination between the mortal and the immortal.
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Stephen Hebron examines how both the idea and the reality of Italy shaped Romantic writing.
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The Romantic period was one of growing interest in ancient Greece. Stephen Hebron explores how this shaped the subject matter and forms of the era’s poets.
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Clara Drummond explains how Lord Byron’s politics, relationships and views on other poets led to his reputation of 19th-century bad boy.
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Dr Seamus Perry considers the composition and publication history of Kubla Khan, and explores how Coleridge transforms language into both image and music.
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Poet Daljit Nagra explains how Coleridge uses language, form and imagery to create the heady exoticism of Kubla Khan.
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Dr Seamus Perry describes the origins of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and considers how Coleridge uses the poem to explore ideas of sin, suffering and salvation.
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Professor Philip Shaw traces the influence of the Battle of Waterloo on the third canto of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, considering how Byron uses it to explore ideas of violence and sacrifice.
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Dr Robert Irvine examines the Hastie manuscript, a collection of manuscript songs by Robert Burns, and The Scots Musical Museum, where they were ultimately published.
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Greg Buzwell describes the bizarre circumstances that gave rise to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and the other works that emerged from the ‘ghost story challenge’ at the Villa Diodati in the summer of 1816.
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Dr Robert Irvine considers the career of Robert Burns as a writer driven more by the excitement of writing and collecting verse than the desire for outward success, despite achieving long-term fame as Scotland’s ‘national bard’.
Read moreHow did the Romantic poets explore landscape, class, radicalism and the sublime?
What are the key motifs of Gothic literature and how do these works reflect the contexts in which the genre emerged and evolved?
Was children’s literature intended to entertain or instruct?
Why was crime such a popular subject in 19th-century fiction?
How did the writers of this period portray our iconic capital city?
From the origins of the Gothic to depictions of the emerging middle classes, what are the key characteristics of late 18th- and early 19th-century literature?
How did the writers of this period incorporate fantasy, realism, sensationalism, and social commentary into their work?
How did the literature of this period reflect attitudes to gender, sexuality, immigration, class and scientific discovery?
How did the Victorian poets approach composition, form and language, and what inspired their subjects?
From music hall to pleasure gardens, explore the extraordinary range of entertainments on offer in Georgian and Victorian Britain.
How did writers respond to the social inequalities of Victorian society?
How did writers respond to the tumultuous political events of this period?
How did rising literacy rates, libraries and new technologies influence literature and reading habits during this period?
How did 19th-century authors respond to the new possibilities afforded by technology and science?
How were the tensions surrounding social mobility explored in the literature of the period?
How did 19th-century depictions of the future reflect contemporary fears of social, political and technological change?
How did the literature of this period portray and challenge traditional gender roles?
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