The 20 Most Famous And Recognized Authors Of Romanticism
Romanticism has been an artistic movement that has provided countless authors and artistic works to humanity.
This movement, which developed mainly in Europe and America, has laid the foundations for understanding the concept of the current nation, in addition to being, in a certain way, behind subcultures such as emo or gothic.
There are hundreds of romantic authors, of all types and nationalities, making it almost impossible to make a compilation of all of them. However, with this article, in addition to understanding the main characteristics of the movement, we will see its most notable characters.
Romanticism is a cultural movement that first appeared at the end of the 18th century, trying to break with the preceding current, neoclassicism. The romantic movement defended the idea of fantasy, in addition to the expression of each person’s deepest feelings and avoiding the excess of neoclassical rationalism.
Romanticism has laid the foundations for today’s national movements, defending the idea of the homeland as something alive, both from a more cultural perspective and in the political sense of the term.
Among the most notable characteristics of the movement is the defense of liberalism, in addition to the beauty of the incomplete, something that can be observed in the extensive literary corpus of the authors of the moment, in which there is no shortage of incomplete novels. There was a fight against the traditional, seen as a mere copy of another copy of what was at one time an original idea. What was original and what was out of the typical was received with open arms by romantic authors.
Each author, whether painter, writer or even journalist, expressed himself in completely personal terms, trying to capture his own vision of the world. Furthermore, the romantic work was a demand for freedom and escape from the society in which its author had been forced to live. The romantic is associated with the melancholic and the exaltation of one’s own culture or homeland, in addition to the mystery and omnipresence of natural landscapes
Notable authors
Romanticism has been written and painted by both men and women, although as has always happened with them, they have not been given the due prominence they deserve.
1. Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo (1802-1885) is one of the best-known poets, novelists and playwrights of French Romanticism. In addition to dedicating himself to literature, he was also politically active.
As a versatile person, his works touched multiple genres, however, among his most notable works is ‘Les Misérables’ from 1862.
Others that cannot be ignored are the plays ‘Lucrèce Borgia’, ‘Marie Tudor’, the novel ‘Notre-Dame de Paris’ and poetry such as ‘Odes et ballades’, ‘L’art d’être grand-père’ and ‘Les quatre vents de l’esprit’.
2. José de Espronceda
José de Espronceda y Delgado (1808-1842), born in Almendralejo, Badajoz, is one of the best-known Spanish poets and representatives of romanticism in his country.
Although he wrote novels such as ‘Sancho Saldaña’, his poetic work is much better known such as ‘The Student of Salamanca’, ‘The Pirate’s Song’ and, although unfinished, ‘El diablo mundo’ and ‘El pelayo’. He also served as a politician for the Spanish progressive party, participating in the Paris revolutions of 1930.
3.Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley, whose real name was Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, (1791-1851) is the first woman on this list, but not the last. She was well known in various fields thanks to her contributions in philosophy, theater and essays. Born in London, she is considered one of the first science fiction authors in history.
Among his best-known works are ‘Frankenstein’ (an iconic work of Romanticism that is part of popular culture around the world), ‘Mathilda’, ‘Falkner’, ‘The fortunes of Perkin Warbeck’ and ‘Valperga’.
4. Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
Gustavo Adolfo Becquer (1836-1870) whose real name was Gustavo Adolfo Claudio Domínguez Bastida, was a Spanish poet and writer who, although well known while he lived, was not really popular until after his death.
Among his best-known works are several stories such as ‘The Devil’s Cross’, ‘The Promise’, ‘Believe in God’ and ‘Los Ojos Verdes’, but without a doubt, it is his poetry in ‘Rhymes and Legends’ that has made him fact widely known within the current of romanticism.
This work is a set of stories that together make up one of the greatest works of literature in Spanish.
5. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Goethe (1749-1832) is one of the most recognized people within romanticism, being a reference not only in his native Germany, but also in the rest of the Western world.
Not only was he a playwright, novelist and poet, which he is not, but he also dedicated himself to the world of science.
Goethe’s work is so significant that today it continues to make its mark worldwide, especially because the institution responsible for the dissemination of German culture, the Goethe Institute, takes his last name.
Among his most notable works are ‘Die Leiden des jungen Werther’, ‘Wilhelm Meister’ and, the best known, ‘Faust’.
Among his scientific work, his theory on color is notable, in addition to having studied the development of organs in plants and their morphology.
6. Lord Byron
George Gordon Byron (1788-1824) was not only a recognized poet in his time, but also became a true celebrity thanks to his great attractiveness and his eccentric, acidic and controversial personality.
Due to his particularities, there are those who have defended the idea that the English poet suffered from bipolar disorder.
He published many works, among the most notable of which were his great unfinished work ‘Don Juan’, as well as ‘Hours of Idleness’, ‘The Bride of Abydos’ and ‘The Corsair’.
As a curiosity, Lord Byron was in possession of several animals throughout his life, including monkeys, a falcon, an eagle, a fox and even a bear.
7. William Blake
William Blake (1757-1827) was little known during his lifetime, although this poet and painter managed to achieve fame after his death.
It is likely that this was due to the fact that his work was considered more typical of the Enlightenment than of Romanticism, although today it is classified within the second artistic current.
Among his works you can find ‘All religions are one’, more of an enlightened tendency, and ‘Poetical sketches’, ‘An island in the Moon’, ‘The French Revolution’ and ‘The Four Zoas’ moving further away from the Enlightenment.
8. Charlotte Bronte
Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855) is, along with her sisters Emily Jane and Anne, one of the members of the well-known Brontë family, with notable artists among them. Charlotte and Emily, however, are the most notable of this lineage of poets.
Charlotte’s best-known work is the novel ‘Jane Eyre’, although she wrote others such as ‘Villette’ and ‘The Professor’, which were inspired by her love for the principal of the school where she studied.
9. Emily Bronte
Emily Jane Bronte (1818-1848) is, like her sister Charlotte, very well known, especially for being the author of ‘Wuthering Heights’, a novel characterized by passion and violence, with a marked sexual nature.
In fact, Emily Brontë had a writing style so shocking to Victorian society at the time that many believed that her main work had been written by a man.
This caused the work to be seen as something immoral and obscene, despite the fact that over time it would become a classic of English literature that in no high school in the United Kingdom is no longer part of the school curriculum.
10. Alexandre Dumas
The life of Alexander Dumas (1802-1870), born Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie, has gone more unnoticed than his name, known worldwide for being the author of ‘Les Trois Mousquetaires’ and ‘Le Comte de Monte-Cristo’.
What is perhaps not so well known are his origins, being the son of a French general in the then colony of Santo Domingo who, in turn, was the son of a French nobleman and a black slave.
Thus, Alexandre Dumas is considered not only a great writer, but also someone who, in a time when slavery and biological racism were still in force, showed that people of African or mixed race could create great artistic works.
11. François-René de Chateaubriand
François-Rene vicomte de Chateaubriand (1768-1848) is considered one of the founders of French romanticism.
Among his most notable works are ‘Essai sur les Révolutions’, ‘Atala’, ‘René’, ‘Les Martyrs’ and ‘Mémoirs d’Outre-Tombe’.
12. Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854-1900) is one of the most prolific great Irish writers in the English language. He not only dedicated himself to novels, he also wrote poetry and plays.
His work is not merely romantic in the most ‘standard’ sense, so to speak, of the term. He used this movement as if it were a pillar and he molded it at will to create new sub branches within it.
The most notable thing about his personal life is his homosexuality, which was more than controversial in Irish society at the time, characterized by a strong Catholic morality.
Among his best-known works are ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ and ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’. His last publications, ‘De profundis’ and ‘The Ballad of Reading’, were written from prison.
13. Jane Austen
Jane Austen (1775-1817), is one of the leading authors of English romanticism, it is essential to read her works in the Saxon country, such as ‘Pride and Prejudice’, ‘Sense and Sensibility’, ‘Mansfield Park’, ‘Love and Friendship’ and ‘Emma’.
Born as Edgar Poe (1809-1849) is perhaps the best-known romantic writer born in the United States. In addition, he was a poet, literary critic and journalist.
His writings are characterized by being short stories, with a Gothic tendency, in addition to horror stories being abundant among his work and being one of the main references in terms of the horror genre.
‘The Black Cat’, ‘The Cask of Amontillado’, ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’ and ‘Hop-Frog’ are some of his best-known stories, and among his poetry you cannot ignore ‘The Bells’, ‘Ulalume’ and, perhaps his best-known work, ‘The Raven’.
15. Lewis Carroll
His real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgeson (1832-1898) and, in addition to being a writer, he was a mathematician, Anglican deacon and photographer.
He is known worldwide for being the author of ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ and its sequel ‘Through the Looking-glass’, children’s novels that have become classics, in addition to being adapted on several occasions to the world of cinema.
In his novels he makes some nods to the world of mathematics, in addition to being marked by paradox and nonsense.
16.Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens (1812-1870) is the author of up to 15 novels, in addition to several short stories and essays critical of the state of English society in which he lived.
His works such as ‘Oliver Twist’, ‘Nicholas Nickleby’, ‘David Copperfield’ and ‘Great Expectations’ are quite famous.
17. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Although he lived in a time before romanticism, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) was a Genevan philosopher and writer, as well as a musical composer, botanist and naturalist.
He described the society of his time and sought to improve it through the use of his thought, writing such notable works as ‘Du contrat social’ and ‘Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inégalité parmi les hommes’.
He also wrote novels, such as ‘Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse’, and also texts on pedagogy, such as ‘Émile, ou De l’éducation’.
18. William Wordsworth
As a great English poet that he was, William Wordsworth (1770-1850).
Among his works you can find The Solitary Reaper, The Prelude, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, The Tables Turned and many more.
19. Rosalía de Castro
María Rosalía Rita de Castro (1837-1885) was a Galician poet, very important and prominent within Spanish literature.
He wrote both in Spanish and in his native language, Galician, and his work ‘Cantares galegos’ is a symbol of Galician culture, whose publication date, May 17, 1863, has become the ‘Day of Galician letters’. ‘, celebration of literature in Galician.
His work is characterized by appreciation for his homeland, showing nostalgia or ‘homeliness’. Furthermore, the fact that part of his work is written in Galician is a declaration of principles, attachment and defense of his culture. Other notable works are, in Spanish, the poetic ‘La flor’, ‘A mi madre’ and ‘On the shores of the Sar’, while in Galician ‘Follas novas’ is notable. In prose we can highlight ‘Contos da miña terra’.
20. Emily Dickinson
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (1830-1886) was an American poet, whose poetry is characterized by having a special sensitivity, in addition to being wrapped in mystery and addressing various themes in a very profound way.
