"Anita Brookner traces how French Romanticism followed the political turmoil of the late eighteenth century and the defeat at Waterloo in 1815, and replaced the agnosticism of the Enlightenment and the Revolution with a new heroism.

Examining the works of Delacroix, Ingres and Gros, the Brothers Goncourt, Baudelaire, Zola, Alfred de Musset and Huysmans, she argues that the Romantics in France made the heroism of modern life their creed and transferred their idealism to the domain of art, either as practitioners or as critics." "At the same time, Anita Brookner takes the reader on a tour of these artists and writers, bringing vividly to life unfamiliar works, and casting a brillant new light on more familiar ones."--BOOK JACKET.