William Blake was a prominent poet, writer and artist of the Romantic Age. William Godwin was also a writer and philosopher who is considered as a major influence upon the Romantic Movement. Percy Bysshe Shelley became overwhelmingly famous for his romantic writings, especially in the literary world, after his death in 1822. The Romantic Age is dated as beginning during the early part of the 18th Century, and continuing up to the mid 19th Century. The French Revolution was an event that seriously impacted the philosophy and writings of many of the Romantic writer and poets:
In a letter to Byron in 1816, Percy Shelley declared that the French Revolution was “the master theme of the epoch in which we live” — a judgment with which many of Shelley’s contemporaries concurred. As one of this period’s topics, “The French Revolution: Apocalyptic Expectations,” demonstrates, intellectuals of the age were obsessed with the concept of violent and inclusive change in the human condition, and the writings of those we now consider the major Romantic poets cannot be understood, historically, without an awareness of the extent to which their distinctive concepts, plots, forms, and imagery were shaped first by the promise, then by the tragedy, of the great events in neighboring France. And for the young poets in the early years of 1789–93, the enthusiasm for the Revolution had the impetus and high excitement of a religious awakening, because they interpreted the events in France in accordance with the apocalyptic prophecies in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures; that is, they viewed these events as fulfilling the promise, guaranteed by an infallible text, that a short period of retributive and cleansing violence would usher in an age of universal peace and blessedness that would be the equivalent of a restored Paradise. Even after what they considered to be the failure of the revolutionary promise, these poets did not surrender their hope for a radical reformation of humankind and its social and political world; instead, they transferred the basis of that hope from violent political revolution to a quiet but drastic revolution in the moral and imaginative nature of the human race. (http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/romantic/welcome.htm)
At the turn of the century, fired by ideas of personal and political liberty and of the energy and sublimity of the natural world, artists and intellectuals sought to break the bonds of 18th-century convention. Although the works of Jean Jacques Rousseau and William Godwin had great influence, the French Revolution and its aftermath had the strongest impact of all. In England initial support for the Revolution was primarily utopian and idealist, and when the French failed to live up to expectations, most English intellectuals renounced the Revolution. However, the romantic vision had taken forms other than political, and these developed apace.
(http://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/entertainment/english-literature-the-romantic-period.html)
Mary Wollstonecraft, the famous author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, was deeply interrelated to individuals who were contributors to the work and philosophy of the Romantic Period. William Godwin, her husband, and the father of her second daughter, Mary Bysshe Shelley was a major influence in the movement. Her daughter married the famous Romantic Poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley. Percy Shelley was born 1792, the year that Wollstonecraft’s, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was published. William Blake wrote a moving poem about Mary Wollstonecraft titled “Mary”, depicting the suffering and struggles of her unique but immensely contributory life.
Links to other related sites:
A Timeline of the Romantic Movement
http://www.datehookup.com/content-a-timeline-of-the-romantic-movement.htm
Percy Bysshe Shelley
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/179
William Blake
http://www.biography.com/people/william-blake-9214491#awesm=~oAQGGQosUf3s4B
William Godwin
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/godwin/
Women in European History 