This study examines the selection and portrayal of the romantic era’s authors and literary traits in three textbooks for the upper secondary course Swedish 2 using hermeneutic qualitative analysis with comparative elements. The textbooks are examined through the lens of gender oriented and postcolonial literary theories. The results show that the textbooks present a unified view of the traits of the romantic era and uphold the author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as the main representative of the ideals of the romantic era. Female authors are largely underrepresented in two of the textbooks, and treated differently from male authors in all textbooks, with more emphasis being placed on their private lives, relationships with men and engagement in women’s issues rather than literary and societal impact. Non-western authors and literary works are completely absent from the sections on romanticism, and postcolonial themes in romantic literature are largely overlooked.