William Wordsworth - Lyrical Ballads: 1798 and 1802

OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS

LYRICAL BALLADS

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH was born in Cockermouth, in Cumberland, in 1770. He lived to become Poet Laureate to the young Queen Victoria in 1843, seven years before his death in 1850. Wordsworth travelled through France during the turbulent period of the Revolution, where he met Annette Vallon, who became the mother of his first child, Caroline. After his return to England, he published An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches in 1793, continued to frequent radical circles, but experienced severe psychological turmoil later recalled in his great autobiographical poem, The Prelude. Once reunited with his sister, Dorothy, Wordsworth began a period of poetic composition which was greatly enhanced by the close friendship with Coleridge. Lyrical Ballads, a joint enterprise, was published anonymously in 1798, and an enlarged edition in two volumes was published under Wordsworths name in 1800, with further additions in 1802. Wordsworth visited Germany before settling in the Lake District, which became his home for the rest of his life. He married Mary Hutchinson in 1802.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE was born in Ottery St Mary, in Devon, in 1772. He was a supporter of the French Revolution and worked as a political lecturer and journalist, publishing his first collection of Poems in 1796. With the poet Robert Southey he planned to establish an egalitarian society in America, and married Sara Fricker, sister of Southeys wife Edith. He moved to Somerset where he met Wordsworth and worked with him to produce Lyrical Ballads. After travel in Germany, in 1800 he moved to the Lakes to be nearer Wordsworth. He was afflicted by poor health, opium addiction and domestic unhappiness for much of his life. In 1817 he published Biographia Literaria, a personal account of his critical and philosophical opinions, which was to prove enormously influential. A slim volume of earlier, unpublished poems, including Kubla Khan and Christabel, was brought out in 1816, followed by the more substantial Sibylline Leaves in 1817. Coleridge died in 1834.

FIONA STAFFORD is Professor of English at the University of Oxford. Her books include Reading Romantic Poetry (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2012) and Local Attachments: The Province of Poetry (Oxford, 2010), and editions of Jane Austens Emma (Penguin, 2003) and Pride and Prejudice (Oxford Worlds Classics, 2004).

OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH and
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

Lyrical Ballads

1798 and 1802

Edited with an Introduction and Notes by

FIONA STAFFORD

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

SPECIAL thanks are due to Jeff Cowton and the staff of the Jerwood Centre and the Wordsworth Trust for invaluable assistance of various kinds, and for enabling access to the rich resources of the collection in Grasmere. I would also like to thank the staff of the Bodleian, the British Library, the English Faculty Library, and Somerville College Library. Those in the Academic Office at Somerville have also been cheerfully helpful in responding to various practical requests. For introducing me to Wordsworth and Coleridge, I am indebted to Kelvin Everest and Martin Stannard, and for deepening my knowledge and understanding of both poets and the period in which they worked, I owe long-standing debts to Paul Hamilton, Tony Nuttall, Roy Park, and Jonathan Wordsworth. The preparation of this edition has been greatly helped by discussions with students and colleagues over a number of years. Particular thanks are due to Ben Brice, Tim Fulford, Stephen Gill, Richard Gravil, Nicholas Halmi, Andrew McNeillie, Lucy Newlyn, Meiko OHalloran, Craig Sharp, Neil Vickers, Damian Walford Davies, and Rachael Sparkes. Judith Luna has been the ideal editor throughoutprompt in her insightful responses, and immensely tactful in her prompts.

CONTENTS

ANY editor of Lyrical Ballads is indebted to the remarkable work of the most distinguished Wordsworth and Coleridge scholars. The list of works below includes the books that have been most helpful in the preparation of this volume and to which the editorial material refers most frequently. Additional studies and critical works are cited in the notes and in the Select Bibliography.