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Lyrical Ballads: 1798 and 1800
A fascinating case study in the history of poetry, publishing, and authorship. This Broadview edition is the first to reprint both the 1798 and the 1800 editions of Lyrical Ballads in their entirety.
168 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 20, 2023
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42 people want to read
About the author
William Wordsworth
2,174 books1,374 followersWilliam 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
September 30, 2024
It's a symptom of the would-be writer to oftentimes engage in talking about what it means to write - what it means to be a writer - more often, and with more intensity and, better yet, more (seeming) sincerity, than to engage in the actual practice of writing. (I've been guilty of this myself; I'm guilty of this right now.) This variety of metaconsciousness is unavoidable (and not necessarily harmful, or unwelcome), and, what's more, sometimes some writers are better at it (i.e., they do so more thoughtfully) than they do the other thing. However, despite what the writer may say, or believe, about their "philosophy of composition" - that is, their aesthetic; despite how they feel or what they believe about "their art," whether Borges thinks it exists or not - owing to the intractable concatenation of history, no less: changing tastes, values, et cetera - time itself necessarily corrupts the message. Put another way, all art - at least as the artist intended it to be received - is just as susceptible to death as the person who made it.
I say this because, having come to Lyrical Ballads more than 200 years after its publication, my scant exposure to the romantics notwithstanding, even though I intellectually understand Wordsworth's - and, to a lesser extent, Coleridge's - progressive aims, both with the collection and with the larger movement, I still can't see these poems as anything other than very fucking old. Reading Wordsworth's groundbreaking "Preface" - in this volume placed at the end, after the poems, and unironically my favorite part of the book - can purge one of their cultural and perhaps aesthetic biases. The poetry-lovers of today, even the ones, like me, who studied English literature in college, mostly read and write free-verse: Meter, which is timeless and present whether we want it to be or not, is unappreciated; and rhyme scheme, not necessarily rhyme (viz. rhyme as a random event), is - for some - vociferously decried and avoided. Whether this represents, on a deeper level, a cultural liberation or the softening of the mind, the stupefication of the average reader, which was and always has been the average consumer - writing a carefully metered poem, after all, especially one that isn't iambic, takes immense practice and patience - is a discussion for another time.
To reiterate, whether free verse poetry is any good is something that I am perhaps too deeply enmired within it to answer properly, but I can say that, again - and without shame - because of my biases, that I am able to notice and appreciate the historical movements that we've made toward the adoption of free verse poetry as the norm. By his own admission, Wordsworth wanted, by publishing Lyrical Ballads, not only to tell the stories of the common people - the poor, the destitute, the uneducated, the unsophisticated - but also to adopt their way of speaking to the poetic medium. Again, I can't really appreciate what this means. In some ways, probably because Wordsworth was ultimately successful, I associate modern poetry with that very thing (i.e., an unrestrained voice) and classical poetry/literature with the highfalutin, the carefully constructed, the poetic-seeming; therefore, to read an old book and, as I do it, find something halfway between classical and modern (though much closer to the latter than to the former) is to find it just as liminal as it is limited, just as ancient as it is anachronistic. As a modern reader who (thinks he) loves the classics, I'm suddenly aware that I believe I love them because they are so unlike the kinds of things written today. But the actual meaning of their relationship - if their timelines and prior influences could be perfectly and deterministically traced - remains, and remain it always will, an indelible mystery.
I say this because, having come to Lyrical Ballads more than 200 years after its publication, my scant exposure to the romantics notwithstanding, even though I intellectually understand Wordsworth's - and, to a lesser extent, Coleridge's - progressive aims, both with the collection and with the larger movement, I still can't see these poems as anything other than very fucking old. Reading Wordsworth's groundbreaking "Preface" - in this volume placed at the end, after the poems, and unironically my favorite part of the book - can purge one of their cultural and perhaps aesthetic biases. The poetry-lovers of today, even the ones, like me, who studied English literature in college, mostly read and write free-verse: Meter, which is timeless and present whether we want it to be or not, is unappreciated; and rhyme scheme, not necessarily rhyme (viz. rhyme as a random event), is - for some - vociferously decried and avoided. Whether this represents, on a deeper level, a cultural liberation or the softening of the mind, the stupefication of the average reader, which was and always has been the average consumer - writing a carefully metered poem, after all, especially one that isn't iambic, takes immense practice and patience - is a discussion for another time.
To reiterate, whether free verse poetry is any good is something that I am perhaps too deeply enmired within it to answer properly, but I can say that, again - and without shame - because of my biases, that I am able to notice and appreciate the historical movements that we've made toward the adoption of free verse poetry as the norm. By his own admission, Wordsworth wanted, by publishing Lyrical Ballads, not only to tell the stories of the common people - the poor, the destitute, the uneducated, the unsophisticated - but also to adopt their way of speaking to the poetic medium. Again, I can't really appreciate what this means. In some ways, probably because Wordsworth was ultimately successful, I associate modern poetry with that very thing (i.e., an unrestrained voice) and classical poetry/literature with the highfalutin, the carefully constructed, the poetic-seeming; therefore, to read an old book and, as I do it, find something halfway between classical and modern (though much closer to the latter than to the former) is to find it just as liminal as it is limited, just as ancient as it is anachronistic. As a modern reader who (thinks he) loves the classics, I'm suddenly aware that I believe I love them because they are so unlike the kinds of things written today. But the actual meaning of their relationship - if their timelines and prior influences could be perfectly and deterministically traced - remains, and remain it always will, an indelible mystery.
November 29, 2022
Inspired to read this after going through Andrew Klavans book *The Truth and Beauty*.
I am not usually big into poetry so this was a stretch for me. I really enjoyed reading through the poems that Klavan unpacked in his book like "The Ancient Mariner" and "Tintern Abbey". I liked the narrative driven poems and struggled more with the poems describing nature.
I think I would prefer reading one poem multiple times rather than reading a bunch of them all at once.
I am not usually big into poetry so this was a stretch for me. I really enjoyed reading through the poems that Klavan unpacked in his book like "The Ancient Mariner" and "Tintern Abbey". I liked the narrative driven poems and struggled more with the poems describing nature.
I think I would prefer reading one poem multiple times rather than reading a bunch of them all at once.
April 8, 2023
Having read and been underwhelmed by Whitman's Leaves of Grass, I went back to something that the younger Whitman might have known and/or studied and/or been influenced by. Wordsworth is repetitive too (I'm not sure when I've come across quite so many mossy rocks!) and there's an innocence and wide-eyed naivety at work too but still, like Whitman, the poet does achieve his objective of turning our attention to the universe contained within the commonplace.
October 28, 2022
wordsworth is not a victim of nominative determinism
April 19, 2023
There were some poems I liked in this collection, but mostly did not enjoy my time reading this.
August 31, 2023
Great poems but more interesting/controversial stuff in the preface from Wordsworth himself plus awesome commentary from gothic/romantic scholar Michael Gamer.
January 28, 2025
Didn't read all of it... but what I did read was traumatizing enough that I'm counting it.
March 1, 2025
Mid as hell.
October 14, 2025
not a poetry gal usually but some truly touched me. especially loved The Thorn by s.t. coleridge
November 17, 2019
Like much Romantic Literature:
Over-written, solipsistic-bridging, sentimentalist, egotistical poetry that aims to be the voice "of the People," but instead becomes Wordsworth's political platform for his voice and way of doing poetry. The concept of the "lyrical ballad" is a way of democratizing verse to represent the commonplace and to give the gentry and common people a voice in an era where aristocrats and monarchs dominated (circa late 18th C.-early 19th C.). What it is is William Wordsworth representation of himself as the beacon of the people - that he is an elevated individual with the unique and right stuff to make him a Great Poet.
It represents much of my problems with Romanticism, chiefly, that it focuses so narrowly on the self and not enough on many more important things. If we read some of Shelley, most of Keats, some of Byron, and some of Blake, we find individuals more interested in extraneous matters to writing the subject, as well as the world around them. What disappointed me was that Coleridge was not represented ad3quately here - again, it was Wordsworth's show.
Maybe one day when I become adequately self-centred I will return to the Romantics. Well, Wordsworth at least.
Over-written, solipsistic-bridging, sentimentalist, egotistical poetry that aims to be the voice "of the People," but instead becomes Wordsworth's political platform for his voice and way of doing poetry. The concept of the "lyrical ballad" is a way of democratizing verse to represent the commonplace and to give the gentry and common people a voice in an era where aristocrats and monarchs dominated (circa late 18th C.-early 19th C.). What it is is William Wordsworth representation of himself as the beacon of the people - that he is an elevated individual with the unique and right stuff to make him a Great Poet.
It represents much of my problems with Romanticism, chiefly, that it focuses so narrowly on the self and not enough on many more important things. If we read some of Shelley, most of Keats, some of Byron, and some of Blake, we find individuals more interested in extraneous matters to writing the subject, as well as the world around them. What disappointed me was that Coleridge was not represented ad3quately here - again, it was Wordsworth's show.
Maybe one day when I become adequately self-centred I will return to the Romantics. Well, Wordsworth at least.
February 21, 2021
Wordsworth is not my favorite romantic. The other one's are generally more interesting as people and as poets. Wordsworth was probably sentimental to a fault, and that cloying sentiment is usually not cut by anything of interest to a more contemporary audience, myself included. The sentiment is effective in the longer narrative poems, like Michael and The Brothers, because Wordsworth displays some interesting narrative construction to reinforce what this pastoral sentimentality might mean in more practical terms. Narrativizing the sentimentality makes it relatable beyond the specific context of historical Romanticism.
There are some smaller poems I liked as well, like the "Inscription for a House (An Out-house) on the Island of Grasmere." That poem does a really good job of not being too precious, and feels almost out of time, compared to Wordsworth's other poems celebrating places. It displays beauty, the beauty of the harmony that comes from the slow, living together of rural communities, without all the window dressing of (what seems like to me, a modern idiot) superfluous emotion.
It's worth remarked that this Broadview edition is valuable because of how much the other material contained helps put the poems into a detailed context.
There are some smaller poems I liked as well, like the "Inscription for a House (An Out-house) on the Island of Grasmere." That poem does a really good job of not being too precious, and feels almost out of time, compared to Wordsworth's other poems celebrating places. It displays beauty, the beauty of the harmony that comes from the slow, living together of rural communities, without all the window dressing of (what seems like to me, a modern idiot) superfluous emotion.
It's worth remarked that this Broadview edition is valuable because of how much the other material contained helps put the poems into a detailed context.
May 24, 2014
I've read the original 1798 Lyrical Ballads in the past and this time I wanted to read the 1802 version with the additional poems. At the time of their publishing, these poems were revolutionary in the language and subject matter. Two-hundred-plus-years later, they seem a bit quaint -- melodramatic and a bit maudlin. I'm not even sure if I like Wordsworth's poetry. There's nothing in the 1802 version to match Tintern Abbey except perhaps the "Lucy" poems.
Overall, if you enjoy poetry, this is a must read at some point and I'm sure I'll read it again. But there are better, though not as revolutionary, books of poetry out there.
Overall, if you enjoy poetry, this is a must read at some point and I'm sure I'll read it again. But there are better, though not as revolutionary, books of poetry out there.
May 22, 2019
I believe the work (critical, poetical, and moral) put into the "Lyrical Ballads" is in my opinion more interesting and important thant the work "Lyrical Ballads." Evidently, there are many memorable poems but what's more memorable than Wordsworth's extensive Preface and desires for his work and defining the relationship between reader and poetry. Definitely worth reading contextually and in regards to critical responses, as well as comparing the two different edition of 1798 and 1800 - an exercise for each critic, and avid poetry lover and consumer. The artist's work never ends.
March 18, 2025
⭐️ 4.7 stars ⭐️
i loved this book! this has got me hooked on poetry a little bit now and there were so many beautiful passages in this collection.
only took 0.3 off for how hard it was to get through, which isn’t really at the fault of the authors since this was standard english at the time. but each poem took me multiple rereads and occasional googling to fully understand, which was a bit time-consuming.
i am excited to read more poetry and to read the other books for this class :)
i loved this book! this has got me hooked on poetry a little bit now and there were so many beautiful passages in this collection.
only took 0.3 off for how hard it was to get through, which isn’t really at the fault of the authors since this was standard english at the time. but each poem took me multiple rereads and occasional googling to fully understand, which was a bit time-consuming.
i am excited to read more poetry and to read the other books for this class :)
October 3, 2011
Look. This is one of the most important volumes of poetry ever published. It more or less defines the Romantic period. You know the phrase "poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions recollected in tranquility"? It comes from the preface of this book. You should read it.
October 9, 2009
Best first collection of poems ever?
June 5, 2012
Outstanding; was never assigned any poetry of this type while in school, and only became interested in this after hearing one of Melvyn Bragg's BBC "In Our Time" podcasts. Very heartfelt.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews