“A vivid portrait of the German coterie who launched Romanticism… Andrea Wulf’s Magnificent Rebels is an ambitious, engaging and effusive account … Wulf is excellent at this kind of descriptive prose, evoking the sights and smells of the city with an almost classical enargia. We feel the excitement of living through the period alongside her vivid characters … Wulf’s book reads as much like a novel as an intellectual biography … It is a considerable achievement” – Times Literary Supplement