Romantic affinities : portraits from an age, 1780-1830

The winner of a 1989 Somerset Maugham Award, Romantic Affinities is a kaleidoscopic series of portraits from an era of tumultuous change in Europe as it was experienced and communicated by the writers of the age.

These include not only the more familiar 'Romantic' figures, such as Coleridge and Shelley, Byron and Goethe, but also Chenier, H-lderlin, Hoffman, Madame de Sta-l, Pushkin and many others. Set against the background of the initial liberal dawning the French Revolution seemed to herald, the disillusion that set in after its descent into terror, and the decades of warfare that followed, Christiansen draws on a wealth of scholarship ranging over many related aspects of music, architecture, and politics as he presents fresh perspectives on poetry and prose long defined narrowly as Romanticism.