CONTEXTS AND CONDITIONS (p. 177-178)

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive
(William Wordsworth, The Prelude)

The dates of the Romantic period of literature are not precise and the term ‘romantic’ was itself not widely used until after the period in question. Conventionally, the period begins in 1798, which saw the publication by Wordsworth and Coleridge of their Lyrical Ballads, and ends in 1832, a year which saw the death of Sir Walter Scott and the enactment by Parliament of the First Reform Bill. These years link literary and political events. The Romantic period was an era in which a literary revolution took place alongside social and economic revolutions. In some histories of literature the Romantic period is called the ‘Age of Revolutions’.

The period was one of rapid change as the nation was transformed from an agricultural country to an industrial one. The laws of a free market, developed by the economist Adam Smith in his book Wealth of Nations (1776), dominated people’s lives. At the same time a shift in the balance of power took place. Power and wealth were gradually transferred from the landholding aristocracy to the large-scale employers of modern industrial communities. An old population of rural farm labourers became a new class of urban industrial labourers. This new class came to be called the working class. These workers were concentrated in cities and the new power of an increasingly large and restive mass began to make itself felt.

The Industrial Revolution created social change, unrest, and eventually turbulence. Deep-rooted traditions were rapidly overturned. Within a short period of time the whole landscape of the country changed. In the countryside, the open fields and communally worked farms were ‘enclosed’. The enclosure movement improved efficiency and enabled the increased animal farming necessary to feed a rapidly expanding population; but fewer labourers were required to work the land, and that led to an exodus to the cities of large numbers of people seeking employment. Increasing mechanisation both on the land and in the industrial factories meant continuing high levels of unemployment. Workers in the rural areas could no longer graze the animals on which they partly depended for food and income. Acute poverty followed.

These developments literally altered the landscape of the country. Open fields were enclosed by hedges and walls; in the cities, smoking factory chimneys polluted the atmosphere; poor-quality houses were built in large numbers and quickly became slums. The mental landscape also changed. The country was divided into those who owned property or land – who were rich – and those who did not – who were poor. A new world was born, which Benjamin Disraeli, who was both a novelist and Prime Minister of Britain under Queen Victoria, was later to identify as ‘Two Nations’. The Industrial Revolution paralleled revolutions in the political order. In fact, Britain was at war during most of the Romantic period, with a resultant political instability. Political movements in Britain were gradual, but in countries such as France and the United States political change was both more rapid and more radical. The American Declaration of Independence (from Britain) in 1776 struck an early blow for the principle of democratic freedom and self-government, but it was the early years of the French Revolution, with its slogan of ‘Equality, liberty and fraternity’, which most influenced the intellectual climate in Britain. In this respect the storming of the Bastille in 1789, to release political prisoners, acted as a symbol which attracted the strong support of liberal opinion.

Debate in Britain was, however, polarised between support for radical documents such as Tom Paine’s Rights of Man (1791), in which he called for greater democracy in Britain, and Edmund Burke’s more conservative Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). Later in the 1790s, more measured ideas are contained in the writings of William Godwin, an important influence on the poets Wordsworth and Shelley, who advocated a gradual evolution towards the removal of poverty and the equal distribution of all wealth. Such a social philosophy caused much enthusiasm and intellectual excitement among many radical writers and more liberal politicians; but these ideas also represented a threat to the existing order. Positive use of the words ‘Jacobin’ or ‘radical’ was dangerous in the 1790s. ‘Jacobin’, in particular, which derived from French, implied strong sympathy with ideals of absolute social equality.