Mme de Staël had become one of the most influential writers in Europe when she published an article in 1816 in which she maintained that the arts in Italy were failing and that they should raise intellectual and cultural life in Italy to a higher level. Simonde de Sismondi, a member of de Staël's circle at Coppet, outside Geneva, had traveled with her to Italy in 1804–5; he began his sixteenvolume Histoires des républiques italiennes des Moyen Age in 1807, the same year in which Mme de Staёl published Corinne, ou l’Italie, a widely read novel that alluded to her travels in Italy. These works were to play a role in the unfolding national movement in Italy. Mme de Staёl called for Italian writers to awaken from their slumber; they should follow the lead of writers outside Italy, most notably in Germany and England, where the romantic movement was in full swing. Hugh Walpole wrote a groundbreaking novel in English romantic literature in 1764, a Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto, purportedly from a 1559 manuscript from Naples. Walpole admitted later that he was the sole author; his novel contributed to romantic interest in Italy, which would be the setting for Ann Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), which is set in southern France and Italy in 1584. Jane Austen parodied this novel in Northanger Abbey, published in December 1817 but begun in the late 1790s.

Intellectuals of the romantic period found the roots of the Italian nation in the medieval period. Important in this respect is the first great Italian novelist, Alessandro Manzoni, whose tragedy, the Count of Carmagnola, appeared in 1819. Freedom from oppression was one of its themes; embracing family and community was another. Revolution broke out in Italy the following year, 1820, in Naples and then, in March 1821, in Piedmont. Manzoni was enthused by the revolution in Piedmont; he wrote an ode that called for Austrians to leave Italy, a “land that did not bear them.” Manzoni wrote in his ode that God had destroyed the Egyptian army when pharaoh tried to keep the Hebrews in bondage. He delayed publishing the ode until 1848, a year of massive revolution in Italy and throughout Europe. He began work on I promessi sposi (The Betrothed) in 1821; publication came in 1827.