British literature

Other poets

Another important poet in this period was John Clare (1793-1864), Clare was the son of a farm labourer, who came to be known for his celebratory representations of the English countryside and his lamentation for the changes taking place in rural England.^[91]

George Crabbe (1754-1832) was an English poet who, during the Romantic period, wrote “closely observed, re­alistic portraits of rural life [...] in the heroic couplets of the Augustan age".^[92] Crabbe’s works include The Village (1783), Poems (1807), The Borough (1810).

2. 
   
   Romanticism and the novel
   

Jane Austen

Major novelists in this period were the Englishwoman Jane Austen (1775-1817) and the Scotsman Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), while Gothic fiction of various kinds also flourished. Austen’s works satirise the novels of sen­sibility of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-century realism.^[93] Austen’s works include Pride and Prejudice (1813) Sense and Sen­sibility (1811), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1815) and Persuasion (1818).

The most important British novelist at the beginning of the early 19th century was Sir Walter Scott, who was not only a highly successful British novelist, but “the great­est single influence on fiction in the 19th century [...] [and] a European figure”.^[94] Scott’s novel writing ca­reer was launched in 1814 with Waverley, often called the first historical novel, and was followed by Ivanhoe. The Waverley Novels, including The Antiquary, Old Mor­tality, The Heart of Midlothian, and whose subject is Scottish history, are now generally regarded as Scott’s
masterpieces.^[95]

Sir Walter Scott, 1822

8. 
   
   Victorian literature: 1837-1901
   

See also: Victorian literature

1.