"The introductory essay is superb, the best short introduction to Romanticism I know. It is comprehensive, covering both the wide range of spheres that Romanticism affected--literature, philosophy, art, music, politics, nationalism--and the broad spectrum of European countries in which it was an influential cultural current. It offers a distinctive, unified interpretation of Romanticism that nonetheless does justice to the complexities of Romantic ideas." --Gerald Izenberg, Washington University in St. Louis