Early Life:

Born on 26 December 1716 at 41 Cornhill London, Thomas Gray was the fifth and only surviving Child in infancy out of eight children born to Dorothy and Philip Gray. His father Philip was a money-scrivener in London. Thomas’s parents were not in a happy and good relation. Like most of men of letters, Thomas also had a distressed and broken childhood and the consequences of that misery were quite obvious on his later life and his works.

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As the word symbolize, the actual meaning is not the same because it has nothing to do with romance or romantic mood but it is really a movement run by intellectual and literary men, mainly in English society and throughout the literary world as well, in every field of life in revolt of their predecessor who were following the norms of Greeks and medievalism which were quite alien to common man. If we specify it in English we come to know that it had started from middle of eighteenth century to end of the nineteenth century and is still alive to our age.

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William Wordsworth was one of the leading figures of the Romanticism movement and friends with another influential English poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, author of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Xanadu. The two then went on to collaborate and came up with one of the best known works of the period, Lyrical Ballads, which was published in 1798.

The ideals of the Romanticism school which Wordsworth belonged to reverenced nature and the imaginative spirit of an individual. For this very same reason, it is not surprising that where he was born inspired the lifelong love for nature, and it is believed that the same even influenced his studies and artwork in a later stage. He was born to John Wordsworth and his wife in the lake district of Cockermouth in Cumberland, in the year 1770.

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When a person hears the word Romanticism, his first thought may be of romance story books or novels or illustrated books depicting romantic art. A few individuals, however, may connect the root of the word to a certain city on the Tiber. Despite the apparent connection between the words, romanticism has little to do with romance, nor did the Romantic Movement originate in any country that speaks of romance related legends.
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If someone could give to the wealth of a language in as short a period as twenty-six years, the English romantic poet, John Keats did so perfectly! Born on the 31st of October 1795, Keats became one of the major weapons of the English Romantic Movement. Throughout the period that he wrote, other poets continued criticizing him. Especially his early poems like Endymion was criticized so much by Southey that the romantic poet, Shelly often attributes the deterioration of Keats’ health to such vehement criticism.

However hard the criticism is, strong men always see through and make it big. Keats was no different! In fact vivid use of imagery was something Keats influenced poets like Alfred Tennyson with. Another major contribution of Keats to English literature is the aesthetic concept of negative imagery. By negative imagery Keats means that great poets have an inherent quality within themselves by which they know that not all matters can be resolved. In fact Keats’ biographer, Walter Jackson Bate dedicated a whole book to this certain philosophical stance in his Harvard thesis.

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What is Literature? The most basic definition of literature is that it is the written records of a people. Such a broad definition includes legal and business records that have survived until today. Even though an accountant’s log book from the Middle Ages may fulfill this very basic definition, most people prefer a narrower definition of literature in which the piece of writing chosen has artistic merit and reflects the values and ideals of the people who wrote it.

Literature came into existence shortly after the creation of civilization and writing systems. Every culture has produced classic works that have stood the test of time. Whether this be the Bible produced by the Ancient Hebrews, the Iliad and the Odyssey of Greece’s Homer, or the plays of England’s Shakespeare, dubbed the bard, literature tells something about a people and it culture.

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Pope in an immeasurable respect is an exceptional personality. In the first place, he was for a generation “the poet” of a great nation. There is not a single point to doubt that poetry was very limited in early eighteen century; there were very few lyrics, little or no love poetry, no epics, no dramas or songs of nature, but when we come in the narrow field of satiric and didactic verse Pope was the undisputed master. His influence completely dominated the poetry of his age. Several other foreign writers, as well as the mainstream of English poets, looked to him as their model. Pope was remarkably clear and adequate reflection of the spirit of the age in which he lived. He was the only writer of that age who devoted his whole life to letters.

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Keats: A brief Biographical sketch

One of the famous and great Romantic poet, John Keats Born in Moorfields, London on October 31, 1795. He was the eldest son of the five children of a stable keeper. He lost his parents in childhood, lost his father by a riding accident in 1804 and his mother in 1810. Poverty was a great cause that kept him from marrying the woman he loved most. However pain, misery and suffering had never destroyed his passion and commitment towards poetry. He achieved long-lasting fame and recognition only after his early death in 1821.
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Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;
There are four seasons in the mind of man:
He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
Takes in all beauty with an easy span:
He has his Summer, when luxuriously
Spring’s honied cud of youthful thought he loves

To ruminate, and by such dreaming high
Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves
His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
He furleth close; contented so to look
On mists in idleness–to let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.
He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
Or else he would forego his mortal nature.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’erbrimmed their clammy cells.

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