The "Romantic Period" is said to begin in 1798 because of W and Col's Lyrical Ballads' first publication, and to finish in 1832 because of the first Reform Bill, which opened up the vote to those people who owned at least ten pounds' worth of rent--in other words, to many members of the middle class, though the lower middle class and the poor and women still had no vote at all.  That year was also the year of Sir Walter Scott's death.  But the reform bill marked the beginning of the "Victorian era of cautious adjustment of political power to the economic and social realities of a new industrial age." (Norton 1)  England, during this time, was changing from a primarily agricultural society (landholding aristocracy held the wealth and power) to a "modern industrial nation, in which the balance of economic power shifted to large-scale employers, who found themselves ranged against an immensely enlarging and increasingly restive working class."  (1)  (That's good stuff, says I!)  The "industrial revolution" was a shift in manufacturing due to the invention of power-driven machinery that replaced manual labor during this time, and is still continuing.  One important invention was James Watt's steam engine, perfected in 1765, before the Romantic time but really getting a full head of steam by the new century. (2)  Several results:  first, there was a new landless class of poor people, basically wage slaves.  Darn shame.  Everything got organied and efficient, thus ready for progress, and the "checkerboard" appearance of the modern land of England started up.  Cities and manufacturing places got all dirty from the fires and engines and so was smog invented.  See Dickens, Hard Times.  Yuck yuck yuck.  The gap between the rich and the poor widened more and more and more and more and more.  Gosh.  Disraeli called these the "two Nations" in his book later.  (He was a Jew, an author, and a politician later, so he was a rockin' guy.
The French Revolutionary period lasted from 1789-1815.  Though it was sort of a copycat revolution, its nature was different from that of the real cool American Revolution earlier in the century.  It began with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the storming of the Bastille, a prison in which political offenders were being held.  (see Dickens, Tale )  Other key events include the execution of King Louis XVI (the sixteenth) in 1793, the crowning of that short guy as emperor in 1804, and Boney's final defeat at Waterloo in 1815 (1) by the duke of Wellington, who lived from 1769 and was born in Dublin (Norton's Modern English Drama page 170).  The early revolutionary period was supported in Britain by both liberals and conservatives.  Neato!  The general support for the French Revolution decreased as the general yuckiness of said Revolution got more and more eponymous, and the figure of Boney was seen to change from a hero to a wicked looney with aspirations of adequate height.  Also, Robespierre had a two-year Reign of Terror, which did not sit well with the English any more than with so many of the French people who, possibly in imitation of the royal family, suddenly got about a head shorter; this Reign lasted from '93-'94.  Glad they got that over with!  However, in Europe, the end of Napoleon inspired a lot of copycat despotisms that are really not very famous.  Without Norton, the world would hardly know.
  In England the government started to fear that the common locals would start to revolt, too.  That's probably why they started up a bunch of hokey laws that were, in the imitable words of pal Norton, "harsh repressive measures," (2) though they were not musical. These Napoleonic times put an end to reform for more than three decades, according to the same source.  Since the government of England had a policy of laissez-faire, or "let well enough alone," employers went haywire, exploiting people with low wages, long hours, potted plants, the employment of kids and women in menial and degrading conditions, and no coffee breaks.  And then, when the war ended in 1815, the soldiers of England had nothing much to do, and war supplies were no longer needed, so boom there was the first modern industrial depression.  Lots of idle and repressed workers couldn't organize, so they petitioned, protested, etc. which egged the govt to more repression.  Jerks!  One large meeting of peaceful miscreants at St Peter's Fields was fired upon by troops; it was nicknamed the "Peterloo Massacre," cute, huh?  Shelley wrote "England in 1819" about this.  Also, "Song:  Men of England" and "To Sidmouth and Castlereagh," these three are called by Nort Shelley's " great poems for the working class" (3).  Well, Norton is entitled to its opinions.

Tom Paine's Rights of Man in 1791-2 was against Ed Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (Burke didn't like the rev but most others did; maybe he felt that it was not sublime enough!).  More important for the Romantic period was Wm. Godwin's Inquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793), "which  foretold an inevitable but peaceful evolution of society to a final stage in which all property would be equally distributed and all government would wither away." (2) Pretty keen idea, no?  This really got some poets thinkin'. 
The idea of cultural purification caught a lot of writers' imaginations.  This is closely related to the "spirit of the age," which according to Norton's notes appears to be Shelley's line (his Defence of Poetry) but also was used as the title of a book by Wm Hazlitt.  I'll quote some evocative phrases from p. 5 of the Norton.  "a release of energy, experimental boldness, and creative power which marks a literary renaissance," . . ."an accompaniment of political and social revolution" (Shelley, ibid).  The idea of revolution seemed a good hope for humanity:  by discarding inherited procedures and outworn customs, everything was possible, in poli and social and also intellectual and literary enterprises too.  (5)  By the way, almost everyone was in sympathy with the French Revolution, except for Burke.  Burns, Blake, WW, Col, Southey, and Mary Wollstoncraft were in support of the Rev.    An example is William Wordsworth, bit by the Revolution bug, who wrote the Preface (which you can see my vapid commentary on) to LB in 1800 and revised it in 1802.  I am going to go over Norton's extensive commentary on this in the Preface page, so go there instead.  But anyhow, here are the key mnemonic points: