19th Century Poets

Introduction

The 19th century saw the decline of the Holy Roman Empire, as well as the Spanish, Portugese, Chinese and Ottoman empires. On the rise were the British Empire, the German Empire, and the United States of America.

As a follow up to the Classicism of the 18th century, which looked to the pure formalism of antiquity as an ideal, Romanticism was one of the early movements of the 19th century. Common Romantic themes were emotion, imagination and nature. William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge are early examples of this movement. The Industrial Revolution with the advent of the steam engine and the train, and great human suffering in the movement of populations from the country to the city, led to a rise of irony and emotional detachment as an evolution of Romanticism.