Beginning with William Wordsworth, this volume is filled with poets of the English Romantic movement, including Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats. It also features profiles of the Victorian novelist Charles Dickens and the mysterious Bront? sisters, Charlotte and Emily. The French writer Victor Hugo, the Russian poet Aleksandr Pushkin, and the American philosopher Henry David Thoreau appear as other remarkable figures of the period. Through detailed biographies, readers will gain an appreciation of these influential writers and the ways they honed their craft.