English Romantic Poets: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, Byron, Shelley, Keats.

Timeline of English Romantic Poets: Based on Lectures by Willard Spiegelman

See 24 lectures by Willard Spiegelman from the Teaching Company

1757
Birth of William Blake.

1770
Birth of William Wordsworth.

1772
Birth of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

1788
Birth of George Gordon Byron.

William Blake develops a new printing technique for illuminated manuscript which he uses to print his own work.

1789
French Revolution.
William Blake's Songs of Innocence.

1790
William Wordsworth travels to France.
(To 1793) William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

1791
William Wordsworth again travels to France. On one of these trips he fathers a child by Annette Vallon.

1792
Birth of Percy Bysshe Shelley.

1794
Samuel Taylor Coleridge leaves Cambridge University without a degree; meets Robert Southey.
William Blake's Songs of Experience.

1795
Samuel Taylor Coleridge lectures on religion and politics.
First meeting of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge marries Sarah Fricker.
Birth of John Keats.

1798
Lyrical Ballads co-authored by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge writes "Ancient Mariner" (in Lyrical Ballads), "Christabel" (Part I), and possibly "Kubla Khan".
William Wordsworth begins The Prelude.
(To 1799) William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge each in Germany.

1799
First tour of the English Lake District by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge together.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge meets Sara Hutchinson.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge writes "Dejection: an Ode".

1802
William Wordsworth marries Mary Hutchinson.

1803
Scottish tour by Samuel Taylor Coleridge with William Wordsworth and Dorothy Wordsworth.
(To 1815) War between England and France.

1804
Samuel Taylor Coleridge goes to Malta as Acting Public Secretary till 1806.

1805
William Wordsworth completed the bulk of The Prelude.

1808
Samuel Taylor Coleridge lectures on literature at the Royal Institution.

1809
George Gordon Byron begins his 2-year tour of Continental Europe.
William Blake's exhibition: Descriptive Catalogue.

1810
October: rupture between Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth.

1811
George Gordon Byron ends his 2-year tour of Continental Europe, returning to Britain to assume his set in the House of Lords.

Percy Bysshe Shelley elopes with Harriet Westbrook.

1812
George Gordon Byron publishes the first two cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, and thereby became famous.

1814
Percy Bysshe Shelley abandons his pregnant wife (Harriet Westbrook, who shortly after commits suicide) to elope with Mary Wollstonecraft.

1815
Napoleon defeated at Waterloo. The peace with France makes travel easier for the English to continental Europe.

George Gordon Byron marries Annabella Milbanke, mother of his daughter Augusta Ada.

John Keats begins his medical studies in London.

John Keats' first volume of poems published; reviewed negatively by conservative Tory reviewers.

1816
Annabella Milbanke leaves George Gordon Byron, who leaves England permanently.

Endymion by John Keats published.

"Christabel" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge published.

Shelley in Switzerland writes "The Hymn to Intellectual [spiritual] Beauty" and "Mont Blanc".

1817
Shelley writes "Ozymandias".

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Biographia Literaria.

1818
Start of John Keats' miraculous year in which (through the autumn of 1819) he composed

John Keats catches a cold in Scotland; evantually develops tuberculosis.

John Keats younger brother, Tom, dies of tuberculosis in December.

Percy Bysshe Shelley returns permanently to continental Europe.

Byron writes first Canto of his Don Juan: A Comic Masterpiece.

1819
John Keats's great poem: "To Autumn".

Peterloo Massacre (16 August): quickly this was interpreted by progressives as repressive tyranny within England.

1820
John Keats's Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes and Other Poems.

John Keats sails to Italy, at the suggestion of Percy Bysshe Shelley.

1821
Death of John Keats in Rome.

(To 1827) Greek War of Independence from Turkey.

1822
Death of Percy Bysshe Shelley, by drowning off the west coast of Italy in a storm.

1823
George Gordon Byron sails to Greece.

1824
Death of George Gordon Byron, in Greece where he is preparing to fight in the war of Greek Independence.

1827
Death of William Blake.

1834
Publication of third edition of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Poetical Works.

Death of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

1842
William Wordsworth named Poet Laureate (following the death of Robert Southey).

1850
Death of William Wordsworth.
Posthumous publication of William Wordsworth's The Prelude.


English Romantic Poets: Lectures by Willard Spiegelman

24 lectures by Willard Spiegelman from the Teaching Company:

Poets included:

English Romantic Poets: Lectures by Willard Spiegelman:

Part I.

  1. Romantic Beginnings.
  2. Wordsworth and Lyrical Ballads.
  3. Life and Death, Past and Present [Wordsworth].
  4. Epic Ambitions and Autobiography [Wordsworth].
  5. Spots of Time and Poetic Growth [Wordsworth].
  6. Coleridge and the Art of Conversation.
  7. Hell to Heaven via Purgatory [Coleridge].
  8. Rivals and Friends [Coleridge and Wordsworth].
  9. William Blake: Eccentric Genius.
  10. From Innocence to Experience [Blake].
  11. Blake's Prophetic Books.
  12. Women Romantic Poets.

Part II.

  1. "Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know".
  2. The Byronic Hero [Byron].
  3. Don Juan: A Comic Masterpiece [Byron].
  4. Shelley and Romantic Lyricism.
  5. Shelley's Figures of Thought.
  6. Shelley and History.
  7. Shelley and Love.
  8. Keats and the Poetry of Aspiration.
  9. Keats and Ambition.
  10. Keats and Eros.
  11. Process, Ripeness, Fulfillment {Keats].
  12. The Persistence of Romanticism.


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