The word “romantic” has so many varied meanings that C. S. Lewis quipped it should be deleted from our vocabulary. Yet, from the perspective of English literature, “romantic” is associated, first and foremost, with the poetry of Romanticism, the movement that accentuated the aesthetic value of emotion, human experience, and the majesty of nature. In this volume the finest works of the first generation of Romantic Poets—Blake, Wordsworth, and Coleridge—are assembled in an accessible and yet scholarly manner, together with a selection of contemporary criticism by tradition-oriented experts, in order to introduce these poets to a new generation of readers.
