The prose genre of the Romantic literary essay participates in the larger tendency of the period toward self-reflective, individualized expression. During the 1790s, in the wake of the French Revolution, essays and pamphlets tended to be strongly political; by the turn of the century a new, more informal literary style emerged that distanced itself from the immediacy of politics, although politics remained important. Essays became more experimental and intimate, or “familiar,” addressing new experiences or social realities through the personalized consciousness of the writer. In this sense, the essays resemble the new poetry of Wordsworth and others in the period. The primary venue for the “familiar” essay was the literary magazine, especially Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, the New Monthly Magazine, and the London Magazine.

Central and highly influential statements of British Romanticism can be found in Baillie's "Introductory Discourse," Wordsworth's Preface, Coleridge's Biographia, Shelley's Defence, and Keats' letters. More traditional examples of the “familiar” essay are by DeQuincey, Hazlitt, Hogg, Hunt, Lamb, and Wollstonecraft.
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