Anonymous asked:

what are some good Romantic novels or short stories? (as in, from the Romantic era)

People are more ‘Romantic’ in spirit, I think, when they are young, so it’s no surprise that so many great Romantic novels and stories have young protagonists and were penned by authors who were, at the time of publication, under the age of 25. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein when she was 18. Goethe wrote The Sorrows of Young Werther when he was 23. Pushkin was in his early 20s when he started Eugene Onegin. That isn’t to say the authors wrote ‘better’ when they were young. They didn’t. It’s just that, when we’re younger, we’re more open to letting ourselves get carried away by states of passion and intensity than when we’re older and perhaps wiser. That won’t ever change, then or now. So when setting out to read a novel that is Romantic in spirit from any period in history (a quality that isn’t limited to works from the Romantic Era), pay attention to the age of the author.