Poems, in Two Volumes

Front Cover
Broadview Press, 2015 M12 9 - 304 pages

Published seven years after William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s popular collection Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth’s Poems, in Two Volumes shocked readers and drew scornful reviews. Poems was a revolutionary challenge to literary taste in revolution-weary times. The poems were perceived as inappropriately personal and egotistical in the attention that the poet pays to “moods of [his own] mind.” The collection is now seen as containing some of the most enduring works of British Romantic poetry, and Wordsworth’s achievement in opening up new worlds of subject matter, emotion, and poetic expression is widely recognized.

Richard Matlak places the initial reaction to Poems in its historical context and explains the sea change in critical and popular opinion about these poems. The extensive historical documents place the poems in the context of Wordsworth’s life, contemporary politics, and the literary world of the early nineteenth century.

 

Contents

List of Illustrations
7
Acknowledgements
9
Abbreviations
11
Introduction
13
A Brief Chronology
37
A Note on the Text
49
Poems in Two Volumes
51
Love Money Marriage Dorothy
235
Politics and History
245
Influence and Poetic Dialogue
260
Family Tragedy
271
Critical Backlash
280
Bibliography
296
Copyright

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About the author (2015)

Richard Matlak is Professor of English at the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts.

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