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It was followed by riots and more repressions, some demonstrators were killed in the "Massacre of Peterloo" in
Manchester. The people had their progressive champions who criticized the established institutions and created
"new settlements of the greatest happiness of the greatest number". Robert Owen, the philanthropic factory
owner and a theorist of Utopian socialism, who influenced the development of the working class movements–
cooperative retail societies and trade unionism was one of them.
The social and political changes in the world involved a revolution in the arts. A brilliant galaxy of writers
and poets looked for inspiration to nature, to emotions and to the spirit of freedom. Lyrical Ballads of
Wordsworth and Coleridge were published in 1798. The works of Byron, Shelly and Keats were romantic and
emotional. Jane Austen was not carried away by the Romantic Movement and in her domestic miniatures
described the adventures of young lovers in the English country houses.
Painting was equal to the achievements of poetry. Landscape painting produced two great but very different
geniuses – Turner and Constable.
The old King (George III, 1760-1820), blind, insane, died in 1820 and was succeeded by little respected
George IV (1820-1830) who had been Prince Regent for the last nine years of his father's life (1811-1820).