SOURCE: "Poets Belonging Generally to the New School," in The Literature and Romance of Northern Europe: Constituting a Complete History of the Literature of Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Iceland, Vol. II, Colburn and Co., 1852, pp. 405-26.

In the following excerpt, the authors characterize Stagnelius as a "gnostic" poet and cite resemblances between his work and that of English Romantic poets William Wordsworth and Percy Bysshe Shelley.

The most prominent poets of [the "New School"] are Stagnelius, Almquist, Livijn, Dahlgren and Fahlcrantz. It would be incorrect to allocate them with Phosphorists or Goths, for they differ both from these schools and from each other so decidedly, that they can only be styled writers of modern power, tendencies and spirit. They possess much of that independent and individual character which should be the result of the doctrine of every man endeavouring to develop his own genius according to his own...