Lyrical Ballads and Related Writings

by William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Daniel Robinson

In addition to the complete 1798 London edition of Lyrical Ballads, this volume contains a generous sampling of ballads, rustic and humanitarian poetry, and nature poems by the poets' contemporaries; literary, philosophical, and political backgrounds by essayists such as Rousseau, Adam Smith, and Wollstonecraft; and reactions to Lyrical Ballads.

Genres: Poetry, Classics

458 pages, Paperback

Published September 26, 2001

About the author

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was a major English romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their 1798 joint publication, Lyrical Ballads.

Wordsworth's masterpiece is generally considered to be The Prelude, an autobiographical poem of his early years, which the poet revised and expanded a number of times. The work was posthumously titled and published, prior to which, it was generally known as the poem "to Coleridge". Wordsworth was England's Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death in 1850.

Reviews

[Mary Ronan Drew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Published in 1798, this collection of short poems is more notable for the "advertisement" - a sort of short introduction - and for the preface to the 1802 edition than for the poetry itself. In the introduction, Wordsworth wrote: "The majority of the following poems are to be considered as experiments. They were written chiefly with a view to ascertain how far the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasure."

The 21st century reader, encountering thee and thou and can'st and robb'd and the other poetic diction and affectations of early Romantic poetry and finding it anything but modern, has difficulty understanding what was so revolutionary about this slim book of poetry. It contains "The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner" and "Tintern Abbey" but otherwise most of the poems are no longer well known or considered first-rate. Many of the pieces concern madness, a fallen womkan, an idiot, a child who does not understand that her siblings are dead, or a shepherd who has lost his flock. These were not, in the 18th century and earlier, considered fit topics for poetry.

Besides everyday life in the lower classes, Wordsworth was trying to sell the idea that:

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man;
Of moral evil and of good
Than all the sages can.

Nature was not seen at that time as the spiritual inspiration it now is. This was before the flock of golden daffodils and the 19th century custom of vacationing in the Alps.

Here, from "Tintern Abbey," is more of Wordsworth's Romantic philosophy:

And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.

Pretty inspiring. I especially like "the round oceans." It goes on:

Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye and ear, both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognize
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
And all my moral being.

It's enough to make Samuel Johnson spin in his grave.

2011 No 18

Coming soon: O: A Presidential Novel, by Anonymous

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent edition of a wonderful poetry collection. This is rather like the Norton edition, only it's all contemporary contexts and not modern criticism (except for the introductions to each section by the editors). The editors have very definite opinions on how Lyrical Ballads fit into the history of literature, and they present materials to bolster their case. Very interesting selections, and, except for a few unnecessary jabs at M.H. Abrams, an excellent book.

[Victoria · Rating 2 out of 5]

I know it's a crime for an English major, but I can't stand the Romantic poets.

[Jake · Rating 4 out of 5]

Behold, the book that created the concept of Romanticism.


Read it and understand a movement.

[Sarah]

Course: "Romantic Lit. in the 1790s." I'm not really into poetry, because I usually don't get it, but I really enjoyed many of these.