CONTENTS:

I. GRAY
II. WORDSWORTH AND COLERIDGE
     1. Young Wordsworth
     2. The Great Decade
     3. Poetic Diction and Imagination
     4. Later Years
III. BYRON
IV. SHELLEY
     1. Shelley and Godwin
     2. Prometheus Unbound
     3. Shelley as a Lyrist
     4. The Defence of Poetry
V. KEATS
     1. The Realm of Flora
     2. Negative Capability
     3. The Two Hyperions

          "An admirable introduction to the nineteenth-century Romantic poets and a model of how this sort of thing ought to be done" was the verdict of Time and Tide on the original edition of this work. Its particular value and interest lies in the fact that it does not discuss romanticism in the abstract but concentrates rathe on the specific treatment of key poems, seen in their historical context. 

          Graham Hough shows how poetry at the end of the eighteenth century was being influenced by the new liberal conception of man and his destiny that had sprung from the French Revolution and the French thought that had preceded it. It was an outcry against a harsh world, badly in need of reform and a new gentleness, which so rudely thrust itself upon the poets of this era and caused them to turn towards the unspoiled pleasures of nature and the individual rather than the social and general turmoils of their time.

          Using as his framework for this understanding book the most important works of Gray, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Keats, Mr. Hough seeks to indicate the main currents of thought and feeling in the Romantic age and to suggest their significance to the reader of today.