The Romantic Period (c. 1830-1870), was characterized by a focus on the emotions of the subjective individual. The movement drew on aesthetics and concepts of the sublime; nostalgic portrayals of the past, an antipathy to manmade progress; and assertion of the power of the imagination to transcend worldliness. In the United States, Romanticism was largely expressed by the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century, which championed the inherent goodness of individuals and saw divine experience in the everyday rather than a heavenly realm. Its leading proponent, Ralph Waldo Emerson was a staunch abolitionist, and this expression of Romanticism was strongly associated with the abolition movement.

Literary realism, in contrast, is a style that seeks to represent life without artificiality, rejecting artistic conventions, including supernatural, implausible, or sensational elements. It was a reaction to Romanticism, seeking an “objective reality” and countering many of the aims and styles of Romanticism. In the United States, the realist aesthetic was forged in the mid-1800s, especially by early proponents such as Mark Twain and Stephen Crane. The popularity of Realism in the US was partly driven by a reaction to the stark hardships of the Civil War and a wish for progression into a new era.