In one week in May 1814 Byron saw Kean as Iago at Drury Lane, Napoleon landed on Elba, the Shelleys met possibly for the first time, and Mansfield Park was published. A Romantics Chronology, 1870-1832 provides, through such juxtapositions, a detailed picture of literature and society in one of the richest half centuries of British culture. It covers the life and work of such 'canonical' Romantics as Coleridge or Blake as well as the more recently discovered Hemans or 'L.E.L' (Letitia Elizabeth Landon). Among the many other writers, painters, politicians, actors and scientists included are Beckford, Crabbe, Wollstonecraft, the Lambs, Burns, Scott, Charlotte Smith, Siddons, Peacock, J.M.W. Turner, Erasmus and Charles Darwin, and Joanna Baillie. And their careers are set in, or coincide with, a range of contexts, from the treason trials of 1794 to the Napoleonic wars, German, French and American Romanticism, the discoveries of Davy and Faraday, the coming of gas-light and rail travel, the campaign for the abolition of slavery and the long lead-up to the Reform Act of 1832.
