The writers included in this volume had a profound effect upon the social and literary milieux of their time. During these years of chaotic political and social change, they helped to shape not only literary tastes but economic thought and political ideology. Challenging established beliefs, customs and traditions, they asked questions that would be debated during the course of the 19th century and into the 20th. This first series treats authors born before 1776. A selected bibliography is included at the end of the volume. It focuses on the most important studies of the historical, social, cultural, aesthetic, psychological, linguistic and literary dimensions of the British Romantic movement.

20 entries include: Anna Laetitia Barbauld, William Cobbett, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Isaac DIsraeli, Charles Lamb, Thomas Robert Malthus, Hannah More, Robert Owen, Sydney Smith, Robert Southey and William Wordsworth.