The Victorian period formally begins in 1837 (the year Victoria became Queen) and ends in 1901 (the year of her death). As a matter of expediency, these dates are sometimes modified slightly. 1830 is usually considered the end of the Romantic period in Britain, and thus makes a convenient starting date for Victorianism. Similarly, since Queen Victoria’s death occurred so soon in the beginning of a new century, the end of the previous century provides a useful closing date for the period. The nature of Romanticism As a term to cover the most distinctive writers who flourished in the last years of the 18th century and the first decades of the 19th, “Romantic” is indispensable but also a little misleading: there was no self-styled “Romantic movement” at the time, and the great writers of the period did not call themselves Romantics. Not until August Wilhelm von Schlegel’s Vienna lectures of 1808–09 was a clear distinction established between the “organic,” “plastic” qualities of Romantic art and the “mechanical” character of Classicism.

1. PREPARED BY ANJU A
KEYI SAHIB TRAINING
COLLEGE

2. ROMANTIC PERIOD

5. Born 7 April 1770
Cockermouth, Cumber
land, England
Died 23 April
1850 (aged 80)
Rydal, Cumberland,
England
Occupation Poet
Alma mater St John's College,
Cambridge
Literary movement Romanticism
Notable works Lyrical Ballads, Poems,
in Two Volumes, The
Excursion, The
Prelude, I Wandered
Lonely as a Cloud

6. • Born in England in 1770, poet William
Wordsworth worked with Samuel
Taylor Coleridge on Lyrical Ballads
(1798).
• The collection, which contained
Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey,"
introduced Romanticism to English
poetry. Wordsworth also showed his
affinity for nature with the famous
poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.“
• He became England's poet laureate in
1843, a role he held until his death in
1850.

7. • Wordsworth had visited France in
1790—in the midst of the French
Revolution—and was a supporter of
the new government’s republican
ideals.
• On a return trip to France the next
year, he fell in love with Annette
Vallon, who became pregnant.
• However, the declaration of war
between England and France in 1793
separated the two.
• Left adrift and without income in
England, Wordsworth was influenced
by radicals such as William Godwin.

9. Born 31 October 1795
Moorgate, London,
England
Died 23 February
1821(aged 25)
Rome, Papal States
Cause of death Tuberculosis
Occupation Poet
Alma mater King's College
London
Literary movement Romanticism
Relatives George
Keats (brother)

10. • was an English Romantic poet.
• He was one of the main figures of the
second generation of Romantic poets, along
with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley,
despite his works having been in publication
for only four years before his death at age 25
in the year 1821.
• Although his poems were not generally well
received by critics during his lifetime, his
reputation grew after his death, and by the
end of the 19th century, he had become one
of the most beloved of all English poets.
• He had a significant influence on a diverse
range of poets and writers.
• Jorge Luis Borges stated that his first
encounter with Keats's work was the most
significant literary experience of his life.

11. Samuel Taylor Coleridge

12. Born 21 October 1772
Ottery St Mary, Devon,
England
Died 25 July 1834 (aged 61)
Highgate, Middlesex,
England
Occupation Poet, critic, philosopher
Alma mater Jesus College, Cambridge
Literary movement Romanticism
Notable works The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner, Kubla
Khan, Christabel
Spouse Sara Fricker
Children Sara Coleridge, Berkeley
Coleridge, Derwent
Coleridge, Hartley
Coleridge

13. • was an English poet, literary critic,
philosopher and theologian who, with his
friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of
the Romantic Movement in England and a
member of the Lake Poets.
• He wrote the poems The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, as well as
the major prose work Biographia Literaria.
• His critical work, especially on William
Shakespeare, was highly influential, and he
helped introduce German idealist philosophy
to English-speaking culture.
• Coleridge coined many familiar words and
phrases, including suspension of disbelief.
• He had a major influence on Ralph Waldo
Emerson and on American
transcendentalism.

15. Born 4 August 1792
Horsham, Sussex, Englan
d
Died 8 July 1822 (aged 29)
Gulf of La
Spezia, Kingdom of
Sardinia (now Italy)
Occupation Poet, dramatist, essayist,
novelist
Alma mater University College,
Oxford (no degree)
Literary movement Romanticism
Spouse Harriet Westbrook
(m. 1811; d. 1816)
Mary Shelley
(m. 1816)

16. • was one of the major English Romantic
poets, and is regarded by some as among
the finest lyric poets in the English
language, and one of the most influential.
• A radical in his poetry as well as in his
political and social views, Shelley did not
see fame during his lifetime, but
recognition for his poetry grew steadily
following his death.
• Shelley was a key member of a close circle
of visionary poets and writers that included
Lord Byron, Leigh Hunt, Thomas Love
Peacock, and his own second wife, Mary
Shelley, the author of Frankenstein.

17. LORD BYRON
• George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron
Byron FRS (22 January 1788 – 19 April
1824), known as Lord Byron, was an
English nobleman, poet, peer,
politician, and leading figure in the
Romantic movement.
• He is regarded as one of the greatest
British poets and remains widely read
and influential.
• Among his best-known works are the
lengthy narrative poems Don Juan and
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage as well as
the short lyric poem "She Walks in
Beauty".

18. • Dedicated to freedom of thought and action, and
anarchic in his political views and personal morality,
the poet and adventurer Lord Byron was the
personification of the Romantic hero.
• He was the only son of the flamboyant naval
captain ‘Mad Jack’ Byron and the doting and naïve
Lady Catherine Gordon.
• His father deserted his mother in 1790, and died a
year later.
• The death of a cousin made Byron heir to the Byron
barony and the family’s Nottinghamshire seat
Newstead Hall at the age of six; he became Lord
Byron when he was 10.

21. was an English
poet and cultural
critic who worked
as an inspector of
schools.
He was the son of
Thomas Arnold, the
famed headmaster of
Rugby School, and
brother to both Tom
Arnold, literary
professor, and
William Delafield
Arnold, novelist and
colonial
administrator.
Matthew Arnold has been
characterised as a sage
writer, a type of writer who
chastises and instructs the
reader on contemporary
social issues.
Matthew Arnold

22. • was an English poet and
playwright whose mastery
of the dramatic monologue
made him one of the
foremost Victorian poets.
• His poems are known for
their irony, characterization,
dark humour, social
commentary, historical
settings, and challenging
vocabulary and syntax.

23. Jane Austen
• was an English novelist known primarily for
her six major novels, which interpret, critique
and comment upon the British landed
gentry at the end of the 18th century.
• Austen's plots often explore the dependence
of women on marriage in the pursuit of
favourable social standing and economic
security.
• Rich in comedy, romance, wit and satire, Jane
Austen’s six novels are also pin-sharp
reflections of her social and geographical
milieu in and around Hampshire, Bath and
Dorset.

24. Elizabeth Barrett Browning
• Born in County Durham, the eldest of 12
children, Elizabeth Barrett wrote poetry from
about the age of six.
• As an English poet of the Victorian era,
popular in Britain and the United States
during her lifetime.
• A candidate for poet laureate after the death
of William Wordsworth.
• She is now best known for her Sonnets from
the Portuguese (1850), love poems to her
husband Robert Browning, who called her
‘my little Portuguese’ because of her dark
looks.

25. • In a letter she described herself as ‘“little &
black” like Sappho … five feet one high … eyes
of various colours as the sun shines … not
much nose … but to make up for it, a mouth
suitable to a larger personality’.
• She was born near Durham, the oldest of the
12 children of a wealthy plantation-owner, and
was educated at home, near Ledbury.
• An avid reader and writer, she started writing
an epic about Marathon at the age of 11 and
had it privately printed when she turned 14.
• In 1821, she developed a debilitating spine
disease.
• The family moved to London’s Wimpole Street
in 1838, where Elizabeth socialised with such
literary lions as Wordsworth and Alfred, Lord
Tennyson.

26. Charlotte Bronte

27. • Charlotte Brontë was a British novelist, the eldest
out of the three famous Brontë sisters whose
novels have become standards of English
literature.
• Charlotte Brontë was born in Thornton, Yorkshire,
England, the third of six children, to Patrick
Brontë (formerly "Patrick Brunty"), an Irish
Anglican clergyman, and his wife, Maria Branwell.
• In April 1820 the family moved a few miles to
Haworth, a remote town on the Yorkshire moors,
where Patrick had been appointed Perpetual
Curate.
• This is where the Brontë children would spend
most of their lives.
• Maria Branwell Brontë died from what was
thought to be cancer on 15 September 1821

28. Emily Brontë

29. • Best-known for her novel Wuthering Heights
(1847), Emily Brontë also wrote over 200
poems which her sister Charlotte Brontë
thought had ‘a peculiar music – wild,
melancholy, and elevating’.
• Emily was the fifth of the six children of
Patrick Brontë, Irish-born perpetual curate of
the remote Yorkshire moorland parish of
Haworth.
• After the death of their mother Maria when
Emily was three, the children were given an
inspiring and wide-ranging liberal and
academic education by their father and
thoroughly instructed in domestic ‘order,
method and neatness’ by their aunt,
Elizabeth Branwell.

30. ANJU A
KEYI SAHIB TRAINING
COLLEGE