Five Long Winters

This title claims that the British government's repression of the 1790s rivals the French Revolution as the most important historical event for our understanding of the development of Romantic literature. Romanticism has long been associated with both rebellion and escapism, and much Romantic historicism traces an arc from the outburst of democratic energy in British culture triggered by the French Revolution to a dwingling of enthusiasm later in the 1790s, when events in France turned violent.