Between 1780 and 1830, British Romantic writers confronted the extraordinary historical events of the time by taking radical political stances or retreating into nature, aestheticism, and subjectivity, leaving behind dangerous and beautiful writings that continue to influence our understanding of the relationship between literature and the world. We will read poetry by Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, P.B. Shelley, Keats, and Byron as well as prose works by Paine, Wollstonecraft, Burke, Mary Shelley, and Austen.