30 Great Myths about the Romantics

Duncan Wu is Professor of English at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. He is the editor of Romanticism: An Anthology, 4th edition (WileyBlackwell, 2012), and the author of books about Romanticism, Wordsworth, and Hazlitt.

• Acknowledgements xiIntroduction xiiiA Note on Monetary Values xxviiMyth 1 Romanticism began in 1798 1Myth 2 English Romanticism was a reaction against the Enlightenment 8Myth 3 The Romantics hated the sciences 17Myth 4 The Romantics repudiated the Augustans, especially Pope and Dryden 29Myth 5 The Romantic poets were misunderstood, solitary geniuses 40Myth 6 Romantic poems were produced by spontaneous inspiration 49Myth 7 Blake was mad 58Myth 8 Blake wrote ‘Jerusalem’ as an anthem to Englishness 66Myth 9 Lyrical Ballads (1798) was designed to illustrate ‘the two cardinal points of poetry’, using poems about everyday life and the supernatural 74Myth 10 Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads was a manifesto for the Romantic revolution 82Myth 11 Wordsworth had an incestuous relationship with his sister 90Myth 12 Tory Wordsworth 98Myth 13 The person from Porlock 108Myth 14 Jane Austen had an incestuous relationship with her sister 115Myth 15 The Keswick rapist 124Myth 16 Byron had an affair with his sister 132Myth 17 Byron was a great lover of women 140Myth 18 Byron was a champion of democracy 149Myth 19 Byron was a ‘noble warrior’ who died fighting for Greek freedom 156Myth 20 Shelley committed suicide by sailboat 166Myth 21 Shelley’s heart 175Myth 22 Keats’s ‘humble origins’ 185Myth 23 Keats was gay 193Myth 24 Keats was killed by a review 203Myth 25 Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote Frankenstein 212Myth 26 Women writers were an exploited underclass – unknown, unloved, and unpaid 220Myth 27 The Romantics were atheists 232Myth 28 The Romantics were counter-cultural drug users 242Myth 29 The Romantics practised free love on principle 251Myth 30 The Romantics were the rock stars of their day 261Coda 270Further Reading 277Index 283