An Introduction to the Romantics

King George III

The Prince Regent, later King George IV

The Royal Pavilion, Brighton, England: One of the Prince Regent’s Palaces

A caricature of King George IV by George Cruikshank

A modern caricature of the Prince Regent, from Blackadder, played by Hugh Laurie

England’s agricultural landscape after the Enclosure Acts

Industrialized Britain, Manchester, mid-1800s

The Picturesque, as described by William Gilpin

The paintings of Claude Lorrain served as a model for aestheticizing the English landscape.

William Blake

Blake’s The Ancient of Days

Blake’s illustration for Dante’s Inferno

A close reading exercise

LondonI wander thro' each charter'd street,Near where the charter'd Thames does flow. And mark in every face I meetMarks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,In every Infants cry of fear,In every voice: in every ban,The mind-forg'd manacles I hear 

How the Chimney-sweepers cryEvery blackning Church appalls, And the hapless Soldiers sighRuns in blood down Palace walls 

But most thro' midnight streets I hearHow the youthful Harlots curseBlasts the new-born Infants tear And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse 

William Wordsworth

The Lake District