( 2 reviews )
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Posted: Oct 28 2005
English poetry is one of the great bodies of Poetry in the world. English Romantic Poetry is one of the great summits of English Poetry. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley and Keats- these four in and by themselves constitute an incredible concentration of poetry at its best. There are of course many collections of 'English Romantic Poetry' and this Penguin one includes most of the great works. Ordinarily English Romantic poetry is dated from 1798 with the publication of the 'Lyrical Ballads of Wordsworth and Coleridge'. And though Wordsworth went on to write into the Victorian Period the great poetry is pretty finished in the early 1820's with the deaths of Shelley and Keats. English Romantic Poetry gave a new freedom and richness of expression to the Language. Most often it is contrasted with the Poetry of Dryden- Pope which has come before. The Classic Poetry is the ' bucket or container' and the Romantic Poetry the spontaneous overflowing well.
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( 1 of 2 found this review helpful ) Posted: Jan 25 2001
This book contains some excellent poetry in it that is worth reading. The introduction to the book is a fascinating attempt to explain the Romantic Era as a reaction to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The problem is that the book does not include very much information about the individual poets, or the poems themselves. There are only a few mentionings confined to the introduction, which is not enough. The Romantic Era is a period during which it is especially important to have information about the authors and poems, whose lives were often fascinating in their own.
