Romanticism as a literary movement came into being in England in the latter half of the 18th century. It first made its appearance in England as a renewed interest in medieval literature. The movement was ushered by Thomas Percy （1729-1811）, James Macpherson (1736-1796） and Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770）. William Blake and Robert Burns represented the spirit of what.is usually called Pre-Romanticism,
With the publication of William Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads (1798） in collaboration with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Romanticism began to bloom and found a firm place in the history of English literature. In fact, the first half of the 19th century recorded the triumph of Romanticism.
As is known to all, literature develops with the development of the society, and is often under the influence of social ideologies, especially of politics which is the most decisive; literature reflects the mental attitudes of a time and a nation. The class struggles motivate the development ofliterature.And economics is also an important factor in the development of literature.These are true of the literature of all countries. The English Romanticism is no exception. It was greatly influenced by the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution.
After the Industrial Revolution, Britain became the "workshop of the world" and the English bourgeoisie fattened on world trade, plunder and colonisation. No country was strong enough to compete with England. The Industrial Revolution pushed the bourgeoisie to the dominant position in the country. It became the ruling class. The aristocratic class retained some prestige and influence in social life and was still prominent in Parliament and bureaucracy, but it had to submit to the rising, powerful bourgeoisie. As the victim of the "Enclosure Movement", the peasants became landless and had to find new ways ofliving. Ruined by the rapid capitalist development,the peasants had to wander for work. They became hired workers in the countryside and cities. Thus, a new class, the proletariat, sprang into existence. All the working people lived in dreadful poverty. They were mercilessly exploited and in some places sixteen hours' labour would hardly pay for the daily bread. In many large cities hungry men and women formed groups against the exploiters. The bourgeoisie got richer and richer while the labourers became poorer and poorer until they could not support themselves.It was under this unbearable economic condition that the workers' struggle broke out, finding expression in the spontaneous movement of the Luddites (1811-1817）, or "frame-breakers", who broke their masters' weaving machines to show their hatred of the capitalists and capitalist exploitation.
July 14, 1789 saw a great event in Europe. That was the French Revolution.The heavily-exploited Parisian people rose and stormed the Bastille, the symbol of feudalism, The Revolution destroyed the feudal economic base. Its influence swept all over Europe. It is almost impossible for those who had no knowledge of the world history of this period to imagine the extraordinary effect of the French Revolution on the life and thought of England in both cultural and political terms.
