First published in 1953

At its best, Romantic poetry combined the creative freedom of a dream with some of the deepest facts of human experience. In this critical survey, Professor Hough examines individually the poetry of Gray, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Keats. He sets their work firmly in the context of the major events and preoccupations of the age, clarifying the origins and growth of a poetry that emerged so swiftly and differed so radically from the Augustan age that preceded it. He asserts the importance of the Romantic experience to the tradition of literature, and its significance to the reader of today.