The Ruined Cottage" and "The Pedlar"

by William Wordsworth, Stephen Gill

For information about the Cornell Wordsworth series, please visit the series website at

Genres: Poetry

525 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 1978

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

[Illiterate · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of his earliest and greatest humanitarian poems. It’s fun to compare the two versions with each other and with The Excursion.