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The Romantics: England in a Revolutionary Age
A fascinating and original view of the turbulent 1790s, The Romantics is the last work of the acclaimed historian E. P. Thompson.
Combining his incomparable knowledge of English history with an interpretation of British literature of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Thompson traces the intellectual influences and societal pressures that gave rise to the English Romantic movement. Writing with great passion and literary force, Thompson examines the interaction between politics and literature at the beginning of the modern age, focusing in on the late1790s—the time of the French and American revolutions—through the celebrated writings of William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Mary Wollstonecraft.
Combining his incomparable knowledge of English history with an interpretation of British literature of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Thompson traces the intellectual influences and societal pressures that gave rise to the English Romantic movement. Writing with great passion and literary force, Thompson examines the interaction between politics and literature at the beginning of the modern age, focusing in on the late1790s—the time of the French and American revolutions—through the celebrated writings of William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Mary Wollstonecraft.
240 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
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About the author
E.P. Thompson
84 books227 followersEdward Palmer Thompson was an English historian, writer, marxist and peace campaigner. He is probably best known today for his historical work on the radical movements in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in particular The Making of the English Working Class (1963). He also published influential biographies of William Morris (1955) and (posthumously) William Blake (1993) and was a prolific journalist and essayist. He also published the novel The Sykaos Papers and a collection of poetry.
Thompson was one of the principal intellectuals of the Communist Party in Great Britain. Although he left the party in 1956 over the Soviet invasion of Hungary, he nevertheless remained a "historian in the Marxist tradition," calling for a rebellion against Stalinism as a prerequisite for the restoration of communists' "confidence in our own revolutionary perspectives". Thompson played a key role in the first New Left in Britain in the late 1950s. He was a vociferous left-wing socialist critic of the Labour governments of 1964–70 and 1974–79, and during the 1980s, he was the leading intellectual light of the movement against nuclear weapons in Europe.
Thompson was one of the principal intellectuals of the Communist Party in Great Britain. Although he left the party in 1956 over the Soviet invasion of Hungary, he nevertheless remained a "historian in the Marxist tradition," calling for a rebellion against Stalinism as a prerequisite for the restoration of communists' "confidence in our own revolutionary perspectives". Thompson played a key role in the first New Left in Britain in the late 1950s. He was a vociferous left-wing socialist critic of the Labour governments of 1964–70 and 1974–79, and during the 1980s, he was the leading intellectual light of the movement against nuclear weapons in Europe.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
November 23, 2015
These are posthumously collected essays, most previously published, dealing with major figures of the English Romantic movement. A social historian, Thompson treats the movement within the context of a broader British counterculture, focusing particularly on its relations to the French revolution and the British Reform movements.
Having just read biographies of Wordsworth and Coleridge, I got a lot out of these essays. Someone without such a background immediately to hand would likely find this work much less engaging. Whatever one's background, however, E.P. Thompson's writing style itself is worthy of appreciation.
Having just read biographies of Wordsworth and Coleridge, I got a lot out of these essays. Someone without such a background immediately to hand would likely find this work much less engaging. Whatever one's background, however, E.P. Thompson's writing style itself is worthy of appreciation.
November 7, 2017
This posthumously collected set of essays is mostly a biographical take on the trajectory of Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s political views. For Thompson, both of the Lake poets began with radical leftist Jacobin leanings, but made a conservative turn as the spark of the French Revolution died out and the potential for revolutionary advancements in England died out. In this regard, Thompson is clearly far more apologetic to Wordsworth than Coleridge and it shows in the comparative quality of the essays. The best essays in this collection are undoubtedly the first two in Wordsworth’s portion of the book. Thompson argues in these that Wordsworth attempted to break through the universalizing rationalism of capitalist society by appealing to the lived experience of the lower classes. Wordsworth’s earlier poetry was characterized by a genuine attempt to overcome class boundaries and to do so in a non-patronizing way. For Thompson, Wordsworth failed to maintain his revolutionary spark only because the objective conditions for social advance were lost. Without an objective referent, social hope is difficult to maintain and Thompson excuses Wordsworth for his failure. Coleridge on the other hand is not given such a favorable treatment. While Thompson genuinely admires the communistic spirit of the young Coleridge who gave the 1795 lectures on religion and politics, he possesses no sympathy for the conservative Coleridge who arises at the turn of the 19th century.
As a caution to the interested reader, I would undoubtedly have gotten more out of this if I had already read biographies of Wordsworth and Coleridge. Thompson throws you right in the middle of their lives and assumes that you know the basics of their social context and England’s political climate. In addition, a number of the essays here are direct reviews of other historians’ work and aren’t particularly substantial. The scattered nature of the essays also means that Thompson’s accounts are far from systematic (perhaps reflected in the fact that the book doesn’t even have a table of contents!).
Despite its many limitations, The Romantics is still a worthwhile text for anyone interested in understanding the revolutionary political dimension of English Romanticism. While Thompson’s Marxism isn’t explicit in these essays, it subtly runs throughout his treatment of the Lake poets and offers an anti-capitalist angle on Romanticism that isn’t particularly in fashion these days. While Romanticism is often seen as some sort of withdrawal into nature, Thompson shows that Wordsworth and Coleridge were far from this solipsistic stereotype and were directly engaged in the sociopolitical issues of their times.
As a caution to the interested reader, I would undoubtedly have gotten more out of this if I had already read biographies of Wordsworth and Coleridge. Thompson throws you right in the middle of their lives and assumes that you know the basics of their social context and England’s political climate. In addition, a number of the essays here are direct reviews of other historians’ work and aren’t particularly substantial. The scattered nature of the essays also means that Thompson’s accounts are far from systematic (perhaps reflected in the fact that the book doesn’t even have a table of contents!).
Despite its many limitations, The Romantics is still a worthwhile text for anyone interested in understanding the revolutionary political dimension of English Romanticism. While Thompson’s Marxism isn’t explicit in these essays, it subtly runs throughout his treatment of the Lake poets and offers an anti-capitalist angle on Romanticism that isn’t particularly in fashion these days. While Romanticism is often seen as some sort of withdrawal into nature, Thompson shows that Wordsworth and Coleridge were far from this solipsistic stereotype and were directly engaged in the sociopolitical issues of their times.
May 23, 2020
If you are familiar with the Romantic poets of the late eighteenth/early nineteenth centuries in England, then this book might be for you. However, I caution you on an important point, which is that Thompson's book is not only looking at the lives of such figures as Worsdworth, Coleridge, and Thelwall, but also at the work of other critics. This can be jarring, especially if you aren't familiar with all of the literary criticism he is discussing (I know I was not).
Having said all that, it was wonderful to return to this period in English literary history with Thompson as a guide. This posthumous collection of Thompson's essays is thoughtful, well-researched, and genuinely funny in a way that is unexpected. Thompson is happy to lambast Coleridge almost as often as he picks apart his work for social insight.
If you're a reader of the Romantic poets, then this collection may genuinely add to your reading. It is thoughtfully written, though I would not necessarily call it easy reading!
Having said all that, it was wonderful to return to this period in English literary history with Thompson as a guide. This posthumous collection of Thompson's essays is thoughtful, well-researched, and genuinely funny in a way that is unexpected. Thompson is happy to lambast Coleridge almost as often as he picks apart his work for social insight.
If you're a reader of the Romantic poets, then this collection may genuinely add to your reading. It is thoughtfully written, though I would not necessarily call it easy reading!
August 30, 2011
E. P. Thompson, perhaps best known for his “The Making of the English Working Class,” and his posthumous book-length treatment of the poetry of William Blake titled “Witness Against the Beast,” planned a comprehensive – and possibly multi-volume - treatment of English Romantic poetry. Unfortunately, he only got a chance to sketch the plan for the project before he passed away in 1993. This volume, “The Romantics: England in a Revolutionary Age,” then represents not Thompson’s complete vision, or even anything close to it, but is rather a compilation of some preliminary ideas collected by Thompson’s wife (a fine historian in her own right, but not of the English Romantics), which constitute about one-fourth of the material of the book. The rest consists of extended book reviews that, while integrating a lot of the relevant history that certainly would have been included in Thompson’s completed book, fail to contribute to the overarching thesis that Thompson seemed to set out in the first couple of essays.
The weakest parts of the book were the reviews, which were really tied together by nothing other than the fact that they concerned the figures involved in the lives of either Coleridge or Wordsworth, and influenced their ideas about and reactions to the French Revolution. William Godwin and John Thelwall are two of the most prominent of these figures, who are of no small amount of historical interest. However, I would imagine that the average reader of this book would not likely be interested in reading Mark Philp’s seven-volume edition of the “Political and Philosophical Writings of William Godwin,” and might feel genuinely miffed that reviews like these make up the majority of the book. To make matters worse, the words “book review” are mentioned nowhere on the inside flaps or back cover of the book.
But there are a couple of pieces that save this book from being completely uninteresting to the average reader. The first piece, “Education and Experience,” is a convincing if somewhat truncated argument asserting that Wordsworth’s poetry tried to bridge the gap between the educated gentry and the common man, elevating pure experience as the true metric of education. Thompson argues that education prior to the 1790s was practically synonymous with social control, and that a so-called classroom of experience could be liberating. Of course we recognize this viewpoint now as one of the cynosures of Romantic thought, but it was radically new in the last decade of the eighteenth century.
In the second piece, “Disenchantment or Default?,” Thompson discusses the role of what he calls disenchantment (being critical of former positions, politics, and opinions generally) versus apostasy (the total and utter disavowal of said positions). He says that disenchantment can enhance poetry, while the completeness of apostasy ruins it, often turning the poet into a cynic, which is what I take it to mean when he says, “There is a tension between a boundless aspiration – for liberty, reason, egalite, perfectibility – and a peculiarly harsh and unregenerate reality. So long as that tension persists, the creative impulse can be felt. But once the tension slackens, the creative impulse fails also.” Thompson insinuates that this might have happened to Wordsworth, and that it certainly happened to Coleridge. The title of the last piece, “Hunting the Jacobin Fox,” refers to the political radical John Thelwall and his relationships with Wordsworth and Coleridge, and their subsequent repudiation of his political positions.
During the years leading up to his death, Thompson was passionately involved in worldwide nuclear disarmament. I suppose some of us think that the eradication of atomic weapons is more important than 1790s England. While I too share this sentiment, I secretly found myself wishing that he would have used the down time between delivering polemics against Reagan’s Star Wars program to sketch some crib notes on our beloved Lake Poets.
The weakest parts of the book were the reviews, which were really tied together by nothing other than the fact that they concerned the figures involved in the lives of either Coleridge or Wordsworth, and influenced their ideas about and reactions to the French Revolution. William Godwin and John Thelwall are two of the most prominent of these figures, who are of no small amount of historical interest. However, I would imagine that the average reader of this book would not likely be interested in reading Mark Philp’s seven-volume edition of the “Political and Philosophical Writings of William Godwin,” and might feel genuinely miffed that reviews like these make up the majority of the book. To make matters worse, the words “book review” are mentioned nowhere on the inside flaps or back cover of the book.
But there are a couple of pieces that save this book from being completely uninteresting to the average reader. The first piece, “Education and Experience,” is a convincing if somewhat truncated argument asserting that Wordsworth’s poetry tried to bridge the gap between the educated gentry and the common man, elevating pure experience as the true metric of education. Thompson argues that education prior to the 1790s was practically synonymous with social control, and that a so-called classroom of experience could be liberating. Of course we recognize this viewpoint now as one of the cynosures of Romantic thought, but it was radically new in the last decade of the eighteenth century.
In the second piece, “Disenchantment or Default?,” Thompson discusses the role of what he calls disenchantment (being critical of former positions, politics, and opinions generally) versus apostasy (the total and utter disavowal of said positions). He says that disenchantment can enhance poetry, while the completeness of apostasy ruins it, often turning the poet into a cynic, which is what I take it to mean when he says, “There is a tension between a boundless aspiration – for liberty, reason, egalite, perfectibility – and a peculiarly harsh and unregenerate reality. So long as that tension persists, the creative impulse can be felt. But once the tension slackens, the creative impulse fails also.” Thompson insinuates that this might have happened to Wordsworth, and that it certainly happened to Coleridge. The title of the last piece, “Hunting the Jacobin Fox,” refers to the political radical John Thelwall and his relationships with Wordsworth and Coleridge, and their subsequent repudiation of his political positions.
During the years leading up to his death, Thompson was passionately involved in worldwide nuclear disarmament. I suppose some of us think that the eradication of atomic weapons is more important than 1790s England. While I too share this sentiment, I secretly found myself wishing that he would have used the down time between delivering polemics against Reagan’s Star Wars program to sketch some crib notes on our beloved Lake Poets.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews