William Wordsworth: 'Lyrical Ballads 1798', with some poems of 1800

Places Wordsworth’s revolutionary poetic practice,

in Lyrical Ballads, in the context of a revolutionary

age. It deals mainly with the 1798 edition, but also

covers selected poems from 1800. Part 1 (Life,

Times, Themes) sets Lyrical Ballads in the context

of Wordsworth life and his age, for instance

Wordsworth in France. Part 2, Literary Strategies,

considers Wordsworth’s provocative theories of how

poetry should work, and includes a treatment of the

famous ‘Preface’ to Lyrical Ballads, one of the great

poetic manifestos. Part 3 offers illuminating

commentary and questions on the following poems:

‘We are seven’, ‘Anecdote for fathers’, ‘Lines left

upon a Seat in a Yew-tree’, ‘To my sister’, ‘Lines

written in Early Spring’, ‘Expostulation and Reply’,

‘The Tables Turned’;, ‘The Female Vagrant’, ‘Goody

Blake and Harry Gill’, ‘The Last of the Flock’, ‘The

Mad Mother’, ‘The Complaint of a forsaken Indian

Woman’, ‘The Convict’, ‘Old Man travelling’, ‘Simon

Lee’, ‘The Idiot Boy’, ‘TheThorn’, ‘Tintern Abbey’,

‘Hart-leap Well’, ‘There was a boy’, ‘Nutting’, ‘The

Lucy Poems’, ‘The Brothers’ and ‘Michael’. Part 4,

on Critical Reception, discusses contemporary,

Victorian and recent critical approaches to

Wordsworth and includes an annotated guide to

further reading.