The Dark Romantics: Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville The Romantic period (1750-1870) was a time characterized by reliance on the imagination, freedom of thought and expression, and an “idealization of nature,” Along with this came a sense of romantic melancholy, and a feeling that change was indefinite and “a way of life was being threatened.” This “melancholic” feeling developed as its own separate theme and gave way to a new type of writer known as a dark romantic. Three key dark romantics that have had a lasting effect upon American literature are Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and H