Dimensions
129 x 198 x 18mm
With an Introduction and Notes by Martin Scofield. 'Lyrical Ballads' (1798 and 1800) constituted a quiet poetic revolution, both in its attitude to its subject-matter and its anti-conventional language. Those volumes and Wordsworth's and Coleridge's other major poems were central to the Romantic period and remain classic texts in our own time. Wordsworth focuses on 'the essential passions of the heart' and achieves a penetrating insight into love and death, solitude and community. Coleridge explores a more fantastic and dreamlike imagination and also writes poems of quiet, conversational meditation. Both poets look with a fresh and visionary eye at the human and the natural world. They examine the condition of men and women at the extreme edge of society; they are also subtle analysts of their own minds and the processes of introspection and memory. This volume contains all of 'Lyrical Ballads' (1798) with Wordsworth's Preface of 1800/1802, and a wide-ranging selection of both poet's other work, including virtually all their best known and discussed shorter poems. AUTHORS: When William Wordsworth (1770-1850) published 'Lyrical Ballads' with Samuel Coleridge in 1798, they launched the Romantic Age of English Literature. Although now generally considered the greatest poet of his age, at the time he would have been considered secondary to Keats, Scott and later Tennyson. His semi-autobiographical poem, 'The Prelude', raised little interest when it was published by his widow after his death, but it has come to be viewed as his masterpiece. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) was an English poet and writer who achieved fame as one of the 'Lake Poets', and through his close association with William Wordsworth, with whom he published 'Lyrical Ballads', which contained his epic poem, 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'.
