English Romantic Poets

Question: Percy Bysshe Shelley was married to Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. 

Answer: Mary Shelley was the second wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Percy abandoned his pregnant first wife, Harriet, to run away with Mary. The two married following Harriet's suicide.

Question: John Clare was known as a "gloomy egoist."

Answer: This epithet originated in Lord Bryon's autobiographical poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812–18).

Question: William Wordsworth described poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.”

Answer: Wordsworth penned this famous poetic description in the preface to Lyrical Ballads (1798). That preface became the manifesto of the English Romantic movement in poetry.

Question: Who wrote The Rime of the Ancient Mariner?

Answer: Samuel Taylor Coleridge penned The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in 1797–98; it was his longest poem.

Question: Who was widely rumored to have had an intimate relationship with his half-sister?

Answer: Lord Byron is thought to have had an adulterous affair with his half-sister, Augusta Leigh. The two met as adults. 

Question: Who among the following was not an English Romantic poet?

Answer: Walt Whitman was an American poet and essayist.

Question: John Keats is best known for the poetry he wrote in his old age. 

Answer: John Keats died of tuberculosis at age 25.

Question: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is an influential work of prose by William Blake.

Answer: William Blake likely wrote his book The Marriage of Heaven and Hell between 1790 and 1793.