The period between 1780 and 1830 is popularly known as the Romantic Age. The Romantic poets are perhaps the most anthologized and studied poets in English literature. Poets such as Wordsworth and Coleridge have been considered the founding figures of Romanticism and of a whole new way of thinking. However, a closer examination of the contexts reveals that the poets were not ‘inventing’ concepts or ideas, but responding to events and situations around them. Furthermore, elements of Romanticism are visible well before Wordsworth and his visionary company. William Blake, for instance, was already working with ideas and images that looked forward to the Wordsworth–Coleridge collection, Lyrical Ballads.

Reform was underway in the England of the 1780s. Social movements for causes such as the abolition of the slave trade, poor relief, education of the poor, amelioration of prison conditions and numerous other efforts were on to ‘improve’ England. There was also rising social discontent. People wanted greater representation in Parliament. Meanwhile, things were rapidly spiralling towards a crisis in France. In the summer of 1789, the fall of the Bastille prison heralded the French Revolution, an event that was to have a profound impact on English society, ideas and politics. PA Brown's The French Revolution in English History (1918; reprinted in 1923) extensively documents this influence. It also energized new forms of thinking in the realm of literature, as we shall see.