This chapter is the first of two on romanticism. It situates the movement in the context of the French Revolution but shows that its roots start earlier and extend later. The poets discussed are Thomas Gray (his ‘Elegy’), from the earlier period, and the contrasting figures of William Blake and William Wordsworth (the latter’s earlier poems). Close and contextualizing readings of many poems or parts of longer poems are excerpted from leading critics, including: on Gray, Dr Johnson, William Empson and Raymond Williams; on Blake, Derek Attridge, David Erdman, Michael Riffaterre and E.P. Thompson; and on Wordsworth, Harold Bloom, Paul de Man, Geoffrey Hartman, Geoffrey Hill, John Jones and J. Hillis Miller.