Inquiry: Daisy Hay: YOUNG ROMANTICS: THE TANGLED LIVES OF ENGLISH POETRY'S GREATEST GENERATION

In the early years of the 19th Century, a loose association of poets, writers, publishers and radicals created the heart and soul of Britain’s Romantic movement. This circle of acquaintances included Lord Byron, Keats, Shelley, and Mary Shelley but also many people not as well known outside of Britain. These included luminaries like Leigh Hunt, the publisher of The Examiner, a sort of Huffington Post of its day. These artists wandered throughout Britain and Europe and led wild, unpredictable and amorous lives as they wrote.  Their history reads like a hallucinatory soap opera. Tonight on Inquiry, we talk with DAISY HAY, who has a doctorate in English Literature from the University of Cambridge and is the Alistair Horne Fellow at St. Anthony’s College, Oxford. Her new book, YOUNG ROMANTICS: THE TANGLED LIVES OF ENGLISH POETRY’S GREATEST GENERATION is a mesmerizing and endlessly entertaining history of these unique writers and poets.