A renowned scholar’s reflections on the romantic period, its disparate participants, and our unacknowledged debt to them

With his usual wit and élan, esteemed historian Peter Gay enters the contentious, long-standing debates over the romantic period. Here, in this concise and inviting volume, he reformulates the definition of romanticism and provides a fresh account of the immense achievements of romantic writers and artists in all media.
 
Gay’s scope is wide, his insights sharp. He takes on the recurring questions about how to interpret romantic figures and their works. Who qualifies to be a romantic? What ties together romantic figures who practice in different countries, employ different media, even live in different centuries? How is modernism indebted to romanticism, if at all?
 
Guiding readers through the history of the romantic movement across Britain, France, Germany, and Switzerland, Gay argues that the best way to conceptualize romanticism is to accept its complicated nature and acknowledge that there is no “single basket” to contain it. Gay conceives of romantics in “families,” whose individual members share fundamental values but retain unique qualities. He concludes by demonstrating that romanticism extends well into the twentieth century, where its deep and lasting impact may be measured in the work of writers such as T. S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf.

"‘Until now the Romantic period was almost the only one about which prolific cultural historian Gay (now in his 90’s) had not written. Part of the Yale Why X Matters series, his erudite and idiosyncratic narrative argues the importance of Beethoven, Wilde and Kadinsky (his favoured exemplars, among many) to the developing story of art.’—Peter Swaab, the Sunday Telegraph.
" - The Sunday Telegraph

"“Highly readable.”—Robert Fulford, National Post" - National Post

"Winner of the 2015 Jean-Pierre Barricelli Prize given by the International Conference on Romanticism." - International Conference on Romanticism