Revolutionary thinking at the end of the Eighteenth century prompted major English writers to probe the riddle of human consciousness and the ways in which it might differ from 'Being' in a divine or universal sense. In the first of two studies, John Beer traces this question in writings by Blake, Coleridge and Wordsworth, and the impact of their ideas on successors such as Keats, De Quincey, Byron and the Shelleys. Relevance to later figures such as the Cambridge Apostles and Tennyson is also discussed.

John Beer is Emeritus Professor of English Literature, University of Cambridge and Fellow of Peterhouse. His work on Romanticism includes Coleridge the Visionary, Coleridge's Poetic Intelligence, Blake's Humanism, Blake's Visionary Universe, Wordsworth and the Human Heart, Wordsworth in Time, Questioning Romanticism (ed.), Romantic Influences and Providence and Love.He has edited Coleridge's Poems for Everyman's Library, his Aids to Reflection for the Collected Works and is General Editor of the series Coleridge's Writings.