The book includes discussion of specific views held by Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley and others, and it discusses what particular interest and experience those authors had with their "pet" issues.
Also included is a sort of verbal map telling how events in one country would influence poets visiting from another country, how they would express their feelings on these events in their poetry, and consequently how the populace of the poet's native land would adopt the ideals of other countries.
Most of the works included in this book are from the period between 1800 and 1830 or so. The author gives the impression that this was the most political part of the romantic era. He also discusses the problem of generalization of writers of that time, that they were often lumped together as romantics when they were really just being political. He discusses the strong association people frequently made at that time between romanticism and idealism. As a result, parallels were made between romanticism and revolt. Such comparisons were due in large part, Woodring seems to think, to the glut of literary output from the French Revolution. The author's belief is that readers of the time saw so much of the Revolution in the work of romantics that these writers were almost "required" to write about it, that romantics were ipso facto political activists.
The book also explores the views of specific authors, including Coleridge, who wrote on the French Revolution (as expected) and domestic reform. Woodring includes descriptions and quotations of specific efforts by writers and discusses the motivations they had behind their actions.
Perhaps the one feature of this book that would not immediately present itself to one considering the topic is the influence of non-literary writers on the literary writers of the time. Activists such as Locke and Newton were finding a fairly large audience at the time, with so many changes underway around the world. As a result, Woodring suggests, young poets began to look to these writers with an eye toward furthering their own success. They were inevitably strongly influenced by these authors, and their own works began to reflect more and more of the political issues with which Locke and others worked. However, Woodring notes early in the book that each poet was subject to his own experiences, attitudes, and writing ability, and as a result sometimes was not fully able to express political views with the type of fact-based tone that he later suggests is present with Locke et al. The result is a wide range of points of view that served in the long run to provide modern readers with a more accurate reflection of the collective opinions of the time.
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Jesse D. Hurlbut--Last Updated November 9, 1993