Historical and Social Background

The most important happenings in history in this period were the American War of Independence (1775-
83), because they wanted independence from Britain, and the French Revolution (1789-94) with all its
ideals. England lost the American colonies, but it gained a lot of power, a lot of colonies in other countries.
So, in the end, this period, from the economic point of view, was very positive for England. The literature
and culture of the time were marked by feelings of revolt against out-of-date traditions and attitudes,
sympathy with the poor and with social justice, and an enthusiasm for change.

Britain and the American Revolution

 George II died in 1760 and was succeeded by his grandson as King George III. We have the first
Hanoverian king that spoke English, and this was very important, because it was his first language, and
he could communicate better with his people. He wanted to gain more power over the Whig Party and
tried to create his own party called “King’s friends” and appointed the first Prime Minister that was
Lord North. Together, they imposed a heavy taxation on the colonies.
 “No taxations without representation”: The colonists wanted to be represented in the government. If
you don’t give us the opportunity to have representatives in the government, we don’t pay taxes. This
was the slogan that was used at that time. Two events helped to galvanise the colonists to the patriotic
cause. The first was the Boston Massacre (1770), when British soldiers fired into the mod during a riot
and killed a lot of people. The second in 1773, known as the Boston Tea Party, where they turned the
tea from the ships (it was against the government), that lit the fuse for the War of American
Independence. The colonist’s protest, led by the Sons of Liberty, was against the Tea Act of May 1773,
which obliged them to buy tea just from British companies. The colonists boarded the ships and threw
the chests of tea into Boston Harbour. The British Parliament responded in 1774 with the Intolerable
Acts (or ‘Coercive Acts’) which ended local self-government in Massachusetts and closed Boston’s
commerce. They convinced even moderates who decided to go against the Parliament. They tried to do
the First Continental Congress in which together all the representatives of the colonies tried to reach a
deal, instead they did not do it because George III did not want any compromise. The crisis escalated,
and the American Revolutionary War began near Boston in 1775.
 In 1775, the Second Continental Congress convened after the American Revolutionary War (1775-83)
had already begun. The Congress was led by John Hancock. Other new members included George
Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin. The colonies now created their
own governments and rejected the authority of the King. Thomas Jefferson was asked to prepare the
text of the Declaration of Independence.
 On 4 July 1776 America declared its independence of Great Britain. George Washington, a Virginian
gentleman, became the leader of the army. The war ended in 1781 and they signed Treaty of Versailles
(1783), in which Britain accepted the independence of America but keeping Canada.
 At the end of the American War Britain was on the brink of financial ruin, but there was William Pitt
the Younger, who, first of all, did a new kind of income tax (who gains more money, gives more
money). Then he reduced import duties, thus becoming the first statesman to put into practice Adam
Smith’s principles of Free Trade.

The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars

 The French Revolution took place between 1789 and 1794 and started with high hopes for reforming
society. The French Revolution was born out of the ideas of the Enlightenment, which brought an end
to an absolute monarchy that had ruled for nearly one thousand years. 18 th century philosophers such
as Rousseau and Voltaire challenged the thinking of French society by promoting the ideals of equality,
fraternity, and liberty. The fall of the Bastille and the publication of the Declaration of the Rights of
Man symbolized the end of the Ancien Régime and provided the French revolutionary cause with an
irresistible momentum.
 The Whig politician Edmund Burke, author of Reflections on the Revolution in France, predicted that
the revolution would tend towards anarchy, terror, and military government. Burke was not wrong, and
the Revolution soon plunged into the Reign of Terror (1793-94). Thomas Paine, on the other hand, was
an England-born political philosopher and writer who supported revolutionary causes in America and
Europe. In 1791 Paine published The Rights of Man, which was a direct rebuke to Edmund Burke's
condemnation of the French Revolution.
 After the execution of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette in 1793, Pitt joined the first anti-Revolutionary
Coalition (Austria and Prussia), and Britain went to war with France. France invaded the Low Countries
and declared war on Britain. Throughout this period, England feared a French invasion led by Napoleon
Bonaparte, an ambitious military man, who seized political power in 1799 and then proclaimed himself
emperor of France in 1804. The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) continued the Wars of the French
Revolution. Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812 marked the beginning of his decline. After Napoleon
Bonaparte’s disastrous campaign in Russia ended in defeat (1814), he was forced into exile on the
island of Elba. In 1815 Napoleon returned to France to reclaim his larger empire in his Hundred Days’
Campaign. It was an impressive effort, but one that ended in a second defeat, at Waterloo, and a
second exile to the remote island of Saint Helena, in the South Atlantic, where escape proved
impossible. The Congress of Vienna of 1815 dissolved the Napoleonic world and attempted to restore
the old order in Europe.

The Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution marked a period of development in the second half of the 18 th century that
transformed life in England. The new inventions (James Hargreaves' spinning jenny; James Watt’s steam
engine), access to raw materials, trade routes and partners, social changes, and a stable government, all
paved the way for England to become a predominantly manufacturing country.
o The Agricultural Revolution happened gradually: technical innovations (textile inventions, canals, the
railway, steamships) improved farming and resulted in a population increase. These people became
both the market for new goods and the labour force to produce them. The population in general was
better fed, though poor people suffered because enclosure took away the common that they used. So,
the difference between rich and poor increased.
o The Industrial Revolution led to imperialism in ways such as creating the demand for raw materials,
which would be turned into products in factories, and providing access to a market for British
manufactured goods.
o The Industrial Revolution could not have developed without coal and iron. Coal was needed to power
new machines such as the steam engine and to produce iron.
o According to the free trade theory, developed by Adam Smith and David Ricardo, the government
should not interfere with the market and with the economic laws of ‘supply and demand’ ( laissez faire
policy). This policy favoured the middle class, enterprise, and capitalism, but harmed the working class
and the poor.

In 1833 the British Government passed a Factory Act to improve conditions for children working in
factories. Young children were working very long hours in workplaces where conditions were often terrible.
This was because much of the machine-minding work could be done by children and parents needed their
children to go out to work from a young age, as they needed the money to help feed the family. The Act of
1833 prohibited the employment of children younger than nine years of age and restricted the working day
to 13 and a half hours for those under 18, and 8 hours for those under 13.

In 1790 the politician and abolitionist William Wilberforce (1759-1833) became an evangelical Christian
who dedicated his life and his work to acting on his beliefs. He supported the campaign for the complete
abolition of slavery. In 1807, the slave trade was finally abolished, but this did not free those who were
already slaves. In 1833 the Slavery Abolition Act was passed, giving all slaves in the British empire their
freedom.
 Literary Background

In Britain the literary production between 1760 and 1837 can be divided into two main phases: the first
phase from 1760 to 1801, is characterised by growing anti-classical tendencies and by emerging pre-
Romantic trends. The second phase from 1801 to 1837, is called the Romantic Age. In 1801 William
Wordsworth published the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, which is considered the Manifesto of English
Romanticism. Romanticism was a literary period that took place during the late 18 th century in Europe. It
involved breaking with the past and consciously moving away from the ideas and traditions of the
Enlightenment and Neoclassicism. In so doing, European Romanticism fundamentally changed the
prevailing attitudes toward nature, emotion, the irrational, the supernatural and even the individual.
During the last three decades of the 18 th century, poets started to express their dissatisfaction with the
values of Classicism and rejected the supremacy of reason as the only way to knowledge and progress.
These poets were named Pre-Romantics because their works anticipated some of the features of
Romanticism:
o the use of Classical forms to express Romantic themes;
o the concept of nature as a place of refuge from civilisation;
o the exaltation of primitive life in contrast with the effects of progress;
o the tendency to use a meditative tone;
o the rediscovery of the art, architecture, legends, and popular traditions of the Middle Ages;
o the treatment of uncommon themes such as ‘the exotic’, ‘the strange’, ‘the sublime’;
o a new taste for the desolate, the love of ruins, the death, graveyards, ancient castles and abbeys.

The publication of the “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads” (1801) marked the birth of English Romanticism, as it
contains the definition of the main features of British Romanticism, which are:
o a main role played by nature, which is seen as the ideal place for man to live in contrast with the brutal
effects of industrialisation;
o a distrust in progress and factories;
o a strong interest in humble and rustic life;
o the use of imagination as a tool to understand the beauty of the universe and to create truth;
o a spontaneous form of poetry instead of all the conventions of Neoclassicism;
o an emphasis on emotions and spontaneous feelings;
o the idea that poetry can express and create truth;
o a new interest in the individual self and the value of the individual's experience.

English Romantic poets can be divided into two main groups: the First Generation of Romantics, which
includes William Wordsworth (1770-1850), the poet of nature, of humble life and of pure and ordinary
feelings, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the poet of the supernatural, of mystery and of dreams, who both
focused on the depiction of humble and rustic life and gave importance to imagination; the Second
Generation of Romantics, which includes Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats, who embodied
the ideal of the poet as a rebel and a bohemian.

The differences between Romanticism and Classicism include:

Classicists Romantics
focus on universal themes deals with a variety of themes such as the role of
the individual in the universe, childhood, nature,
the role of imagination, political and social issues.
Poetry is view as a means to escape from reality
tend to use long poetic forms tend to write mainly short poems, narrative
poems, romances and ballads
tend to use fixed poetic forms tend to use blank verse
 use highly ornate and artificial diction use the common language of ordinary people
beauty is harmony and proportion beauty is associated with the sublime, the exotic or
the irregular
1760-1801: Pre-Romantic trends
1770: Boston Massacre
1773: Boston Tea Party
1773: Tea Act of May
1774: Intolerable Acts or Coercive Acts
1774: First Continental Congress
1775-1783: American War of Independence
1775: American Revolutionary War began
1775: Second Continental Congress
4 July 1776: America declared its independence
1781: The war ended
1783: Treaty of Versailles
1789-1794: French Revolution
1789: The Fall of the Bastille
1789: “Declaration of the Rights of Man”
1790: William Wilberforce became an evangelical Christian
1791: Thomas Paine’s “The Rights of Man”
1793-1794: Reign of Terror
1793: Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were executed for treason
1793: Britain went to war with France
1799: Napoleon Bonaparte seized political power
1801-1837: Romantic Age
1801: William Wordsworth’s “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads”
1803-1815: Napoleonic Wars
1804: Napoleon proclaimed himself emperor of France
1807: The slave trade was abolished
1812: Napoleon’s invasion of Russia
1814: Napoleon’s disastrous campaign in Russia ended in defeat
1814: Napoleon was forced into exile on the island of Elba
1815: Napoleon returned to France to reclaim his larger empire in his Hundred Days’ Campaign
1815: Battle of Waterloo
1815: Britain exiled Napoleon to the remote island of Saint Helena
1815: Congress of Vienna
1833: Factory Act
1833: Slavery Abolition Act