This course introduces students to the earlier years of Romantic poetry and prose. Romanticism (roughly 1780-1832) was a time of intense intellectual, cultural, political and social activity. We will explore some of its many forms and themes, including such topics as the nature of self, human rights, nationalism, political revolution, the role of imagination, nature, poetic form, class, slavery, and abolition. Texts will include selections from authors such as William Wordsworth, Charlotte Smith, S.T. Coleridge, William Blake, Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, Anna Barbauld, Mary Robinson, Olaudah Equiano, Ann Radcliffe.