Laurel · Every poet, by period

Romantic

1789–1837 · 61 poets · 317,088 lines

Romantic poetry announces itself in Lyrical Ballads (1798) and the preface Wordsworth added to it in 1800, arguing that poetry should use 'the real language of men', and in Blake's Songs, which look like children's rhymes and are not. Wordsworth found the epic subject in his own mind; Coleridge invented a supernatural ballad; Scott made the old metrical romance a bestseller; Byron made ottava rima into a running commentary on everything; Shelley borrowed Dante's terza rima for an ode to the west wind; Keats packed the ode until it could hold no more.

The same decades produced the great long poems of other languages, which is why Goethe, Pushkin and the Kalevala sit here, though Goethe himself had no love for the Romantic label: Faust in shifting German metres, Eugene Onegin in a fourteen-line stanza of its own, and Lönnrot's Finnish epic assembled from the songs of Karelian singers. Faust and the Kalevala can be read here beside their originals, and the rhythms are audible even where the words are not.

  1. William Wordsworth 1770–1850Lyrical BalladsThe Brothers, and Other PoemsThe Prelude, and Other Poems
  2. John Keats 1795–1821Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other PoemsPoems (1817)Endymion: A Poetic Romance
  3. Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792–1822Ode to the West Wind, and Other PoemsAlastor, and Other Poems
  4. Lord Byron 1788–1824Don JuanChilde Harold's PilgrimageThe Giaour, and Other Poems
  5. William Blake 1757–1827Poems of William BlakeSongs of Innocence and of Experience
  6. Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772–1834The Rime of the Ancient MarinerPoems of Coleridge
  7. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1749–1832Faust, Part One
  8. Alexander Pushkin 1799–1837Eugene OneginPoemsThe Bakchesarian Fountain and Other PoemsBoris Godunov
  9. Robert Southey 1774–1843Thalaba the Destroyer
  10. Thomas Moore 1779–1852Lalla Rookh
  11. Walter Savage Landor 1775–1864Imaginary Conversations and Poems
  12. Walter Scott 1771–1832The Lady of the Lake
  13. Elias Lönnrot 1802–1884The Kalevala
  14. John Clare 1793–1864Poems
  15. Felicia Hemans 1793–1835Poems
  16. Thomas Hood 1799–1845PoemsThe Song of the Shirt, and Other Poems
  17. William Lisle Bowles 1762–1850Sonnets, and Other Poems
  18. Victor Hugo 1802–1885Poems
  19. Winthrop Mackworth Praed 1802–1839Poems
  20. Thomas Campbell 1777–1844PoemsThe Pleasures of Hope, and Other Poems
  21. Robert Bell 1800–1867Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry of England
  22. Henry Kirke White 1785–1806The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White
  23. Friedrich Schiller 1759–1805The Poems of Schiller: Third Period
  24. L. H. Sigourney 1791–1865The Man of Uz and Other Poems
  25. Helen Maria Williams 1762–1827Poems (1786)
  26. Heinrich Heine 1797–1856Poems and Ballads
  27. Giacomo Leopardi 1798–1837The Poems of Leopardi
  28. Joanna Baillie 1762–1851Poems (1790)
  29. Samuel Rogers 1763–1855Poems
  30. Fitz-Greene Halleck 1790–1867Fanny, with Other Poems
  31. Robert Bloomfield 1766–1823Rural Tales, Ballads and Songs
  32. Matilda Betham 1776–1852Poems
  33. Joseph Rodman Drake 1795–1820The Culprit Fay and Other Poems
  34. Novalis 1772–1801Hymns to the Night
  35. James Hogg 1770–1835Poems
  36. Adam Mickiewicz 1798–1855Sonnets from the Crimea
  37. James Clarence Mangan 1803–1840Poems
  38. Charles Lamb 1775–1834Poems
  39. Alessandro Manzoni 1785–1873Il Cinque Maggio
  40. Thomas Love Peacock 1785–1866Poems
  41. George Darley 1795–1846Poems
  42. Charles Wolfe 1791–1823Poems
  43. Ebenezer Elliott 1781–1849Poems
  44. John Keble 1792–1866Poems
  45. William Thom 1798–1848Poems
  46. Gerald Griffin 1803–1840Poems
  47. Joseph Hopkinson 1770–1842Hail Columbia
  48. Allan Cunningham 1784–1843Poems
  49. Thomas Lovell Beddoes 1803–1849Poems
  50. Robert Stephen Hawker 1804–1875Poems
  51. Carolina, Lady Nairne 1766–1845Poems
  52. Francis Scott Key 1779–1843The Star-Spangled Banner
  53. Samuel Woodworth 1784–1842The Old Oaken Bucket
  54. Edward Thurlow, Lord Thurlow 1781–1829Poems
  55. John Howard Payne 1791–1852Home, Sweet Home
  56. Hew Ainslie 1792–1878Poems
  57. Thomas Babington Macaulay, Lord Macaulay 1800–1859Poems
  58. Jeremiah Joseph Callanan 1795–1839Poems
  59. Richard Henry Horne 1803–1884Poems
  60. Sir Aubrey de Vere 1788–1846Poems
  61. Mary Lamb 1765–1847Poems

The periods are the ones the history track uses; a poet named in a period's own list belongs to it whatever the dates say.