1798 : The Year of the Lyrical Ballads (Romanticism in Perspective)
(Richard Cronin (Editor)
)
Called the year of the LYRICAL BALLADS, 1798 is significant for its explosion of literary culture. It was a year in which Wordsworth and Coleridge vied for attention with many other writers. The chapters in this book work together todefine a single historical moment that marked the beginning of romanticism in England.
Coleridge and Wordsworth : The Crucible of Friendship
(Tom Mayberry, Richard Holmes
)
Mayberry reveals the story of one of the most remarkable friendships in English literature. The years during which Coleridge and Wordsworth lived and worked were an extraordinary period for both poets. This fascinating text explores these crucial years, when both men wrote some ofthe most enduring poetry in the English language, culminating in 1797-8 with poems such as "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and "Tintern Abbey." originally published by Sutton Publishing in 1992, this re-issue will be a welcome addition to lovers of poetry , literature, and England.
The Gang: Coleridge, the Hutchinsons, and the Wordsworths in 1802
(John Worthen
)
Over a dramatic six-month period in 1802, William Wordsworth, S.T. Coleridge, Wordsworth's sister Dorothy, and the two Hutchinson sisters Sara and Mary formed a close-knit group whose members saw or wrote to one another constantly. Coleridge, whose marriage was collapsing, was in love with Sara, and Wordsworth was about to be married to Mary, who would be moving in beside Dorothy in their Grasmere cottage. Throughout this extraordinary period both poets worked on some of their finest and most familiar poems, Coleridge's Dejection: An Ode and Wordsworth's Immortality Ode. In this fascinating book, John Worthen recreates the group's intertwined lives and the effect they had on one another.
Drawing on the group's surviving letters, and poems, as well as Dorothy's diaries, Worthen throws new light on many old problems. He examines the prehistory of the events of 1802, the dynamics of the group between March and July, the summer of 1802, when Wordsworth and Dorothy visited Calais to see his ex-mistress and his daughter Caroline, and the wedding between Wordsworth and Mary in October of that year. In an epilogue he looks forward to the ways in which relationships changed during 1803, concentrating on a single day—11 January 1803—in the lives of the group.
The Hidden Wordsworth : Poet, Lover, Rebel, Spy
(Kenneth R. Johnston
)
William Wordsworth's version of his youth in The Prelude, an epic-length poem "on the growth of my own mind," is certainly well known, but what does it really tell us about the poet's youth and early adulthood? Kenneth R. Johnston, who has devoted much of his academic career to the romantic poets, particularly Wordsworth, sifts through the other available evidence and demonstrates that the poet suppressed as much, perhaps more, of his personal history as he revealed in the deliberate crafting of his literary identity.
The most fascinating material for some readers will be Johnston's (ably supported) hypotheses about several periods during the 1790s when Wordsworth's presence cannot be fully accounted for. For nearly half of 1793, for example, the poet is supposed to be "quietly sitting down" in Wales, but there's good reason to suspect that he is actually in Paris, re-establishing contact with his French mistress, Annette Vallon. Then, six years later, he and his sister disappear in southern Germany for over a month--and the secret account books of the home secretary, who controlled funds for the secret service, show a payment made out to a "Wordsworth" shortly afterwards.
Was one of the founders of English romanticism actually a British spy? Admittedly, we may never know for sure. But Johnston's account is very convincingly constructed; it fits what can be known without requiring great leaps of imagination. As such, it forces us to re-evaluate everything we've ever believed about Wordsworth and his poems. Fortunately, Johnston is as capable a literary critic as he is biographer.
William Wordsworth : A Biography
(Hunter Davies
)
The standard popular biography of his life and work, based on his letters and diaries of Wordworth and his sister Dorothy, and of their contemporaries Coleridge and Southey.
William Wordsworth : The Major Works (Oxford World's Classics)
(William Wordsworth, Stephen Gill (Editor))
William Wordsworth (1770-1850) has long been one of the best-known and best-loved English poets. The Lyrical Ballads, written with Coleridge, is a landmark in the history of English romantic poetry. His celebration of nature and of the beauty and poetry in the commonplace embody a unified and coherent vision that was profoundly innovative.
This volume presents the poems in their order of composition and in their earliest completed state, enabling the reader to trace Wordsworth's poetic development and to share the experience of his contemporaries. It includes a large sample of the finest lyrics, and also longer narratives such as The Ruined Cottage, Home at Grasmere, Peter Bell, and the autobiographical masterpiece, The Prelude (1805). All the major examples of Wordsworth's prose on the subject of poetry are also included.
Wordsworth : Poetical Works
(William Wordsworth, Ernest De Selincourt (Editor), Thomas Hutchinson (Editor)
)
This edition collects every piece of verse known to have been published by the poet himself, or of which he authorized the posthumous publication. Besides explanatory notes on the texts, the book includes the poet's own Notes to the 1849-50 edition and his Prefaces.
