Romantic Period

  • William Blake songs of innocence

    It appeared in two phases. A few first copies were printed and illuminated by William Blake himself in 1789; five years later he bound these poems with a set of new poems in a volume titled Songs of Innocence and of Experience Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul. "Innocence" and "Experience" are definitions of consciousness that rethink Milton's existential-mythic states of "Paradise" and the "Fall."
  • Mary Wollstonecraft

    eminist writer and intellectual Mary Wollstonecraft was born on April 27, 1759, in London. Brought up by an abusive father, she left home and dedicated herself to a life of writing.
  • Charles and Mary Lamb

    The book reduced the archaic English and complicated storyline of Shakespeare to a simple level that children could read and comprehend. However, as noted in the Author's Preface, "his words are used whenever it seemed possible to bring them in; and in whatever has been added to give them the regular form of a connected story, diligent care has been taken to select such words as might least interrupt the effect of the beautiful English tongue in which he wrote: therefore, words introduced into o
  • United States declares war on Great Britian

    On June 12, 1812, the United States declared war on Great as a result of numerous disputes between the two countries. The British continuously engaged in impressment and forced US citizens to serve in the Royal Navy. The British also attacked the USS Chesapeake and this nearly caused a war two year earlier. Additionally, disputes continued with Great Britain over the Northwest Territories and the border with Canada. Finally, Great Britain’s blockade of France during the Napoleonic Wars served
  • Brothers Grimm beging to publish Grimm's Fairy Tales

    The first volume of the first edition was published, containing 86 stories; the second volume of 70 stories followed in 1814. For the second edition, two volumes were issued in 1819 and a third in 1822, totalling 170 tales. The third edition appeared in 1837; fourth edition, 1840; fifth edition, 1843; sixth edition, 1850; seventh edition, 1857. Stories were added, and also subtracted, from one edition to the next, until the seventh held 211 tales. All editions were extensively illustrated, first
  • Jane Austin

    Pride and Prejudice is a novel by Jane Austen, first published in 1813. The story follows the main character Elizabeth Bennet as she deals with issues of manners, upbringing, morality, education, and marriage in the society of the landed gentry of early 19th-century England. Elizabeth is the second of five daughters of a country gentleman living near the fictional town of Meryton in Hertfordshire, near London.
  • Mary Shelley daughter of mary

    Mary Shelley (née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin, and her mother was the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft.
  • Noah Webster

    In 1806 Webster published A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, the first truly American dictionary. For more information on this milestone in American reference publishing, please see Noah Webster's Spelling Reform and A Sample Glossary from A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language. Immediately thereafter he went to work on his magnum opus, An American Dictionary of the English Language, for which he learned 26 languages, including Anglo-Saxon and Sanskrit, in order to resea
  • Victor Hugo

    The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (French: Notre-Dame de Paris, "Our Lady of Paris") is a novel by Victor Hugo published in 1831. The French title refers to the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, on which the story is centered, and is a metaphor for Esmeralda, the main character of the story.