The "Beauty and Terror" of Science in the Romantic Era

A book by Richard Holmes explores the influence of science during the (English) Romantic era. In an NPR interview, Holmes said,

For most people, this period really is the great Romantic period in literature, which we associate with Wordsworth and Coleridge and Shelley and Byron and Keats," Holmes tells host Guy Raz. "But it gradually became clear to me that the scientific breakthroughs in this period had a major effect on how people saw the world and the universe and also how people wrote about it.