Book of the Week: Wildly Romantic
The Romantic poets may have ushered in a new era of poetry, but that wasn’t all they were up to.
They weren’t the old fashioned group of boring old men that they may seem to teens studying their work in English class today. No, back then poets were rock stars. Their poetry was notorious for its subversive nature, but the lives they led were even more notorious and subversive. They were flamboyant about their rebelliousness in ways that might surprise teens who only know their poetry.
Wildly Romantic chronicles the lives of five young writers of the day who became known as the Romantics: Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and John Keats. These rebellious young men lived outside the norm of the time while staging a literary revolution with their words.
I admit to being a bit of a poetry geek. So much so that I was waiting for my copy of this book as soon as I heard about it. Here was a book for me! But I was pleasantly surprised to find a highly readable book that I could recommend to anyone, even teens who aren’t necessarily interested in Romantic poetry. Here’s a collective biography with sex, drugs, and literature for your high interest lists.
