John Keats (1795-1821) was one of the most important poets of the Romantic period.

A doctor by training before, he was the author of some of the most widely-loved poems in the English language, including "Ode to a Nightingale", "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" and "The Eve of St. Agnes."

A political firebrand and an unorthodox thinker during his lifetime, Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was the author of a large body of poetical works that left a deep mark in his own and later generations of writers.

William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 at Cockermouth, in the English Lake District, the son of a lawyer. He was one of five children and developed a close bond with his only sister, Dorothy, whom he lived with for most of his life. At the age of 17, shortly after the deaths of his parents, Wordsworth went to St John’s College, Cambridge, and after graduating travelled to Revolutionary France.

Upon returning to England he published his first poem and devoted himself wholly to writing. He became great friends with other Romantic poets and collaborated with Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Lyrical Ballads. In 1843, he succeeded Robert Southey as Poet Laureate and died in the year ‘Prelude’ was finally published, 1850.

William Blake was born in London in 1757. He was apprenticed to a master engraver and then studied at the Royal Academy under the guidance of Joshua Reynolds. In 1789 he engraved and published Songs of Innocence and the contrasting Songs of Experience came later in 1794. A poet, painter and printmaker of great originality and imagination, his work was largely unrecognized during his lifetime and he struggled to make a living. Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. He died in 1827.