Wordsworth settled for the final years of his life at Rydal Mount in England.

Many consider William Wordsworth’s Prelude (Edward Moxon, 1850) to be the most important work of English Romanticism. Caroline Wordsworth was conceived during Wordsworth’s stay in France and did not marry until she was 18. Before the French Revolution, he toured Europe and studied at St. He was eight years old when he lost his mother. On April 7, 1770, William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, Cumbria, England. Wordsworth’s most famous poems are lyric ballads co-written with Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Prelude, a Romantic epic poem about the “growth of a poet’s mind.” Wordsworth was drawn to the natural world in its many forms as early as the early nineteenth century. As Wordsworth describes in his Preface, he is more humble by criticism rather than frustrated by it while Coleridge remains arrogant in believing that only his opinions are valid. In response to criticism of Wordsworth’s style in this era, Coleridge wrote Preface to Lyrical Ballads.

Being a poet requires imagination as well as the overflow of powerful emotions that occur spontaneously, according to Coleridge. Both men believe that common language should be discouraged because it does not apply to all classes.Īs a result of this discussion, Wordsworth claims that by the way he can be affected by absence, he can educate the reader. According to Coleridge, poetry should express passion in metre. Presface, 9), Wordsworth refers to personification as a mechanical device of style or as a family language which Writers metre seem to lay claim to by prescription.

Writing style is a subject that differs between Wordsworth and Coleridge. We will look at the ordinary, the role of poetry, and the poet’s response to public opinion and taste in this course. Wordsworth’s 1880 Preface attempts to establish his poetic position and points out various points on how he sees poetry at the time.

The Preface to Lyrical Ballads was written by William Wordsworth for Samuel Taylor Coleridge in the early nineteenth century. The Lyrical Ballads is thus an important work that helped to shape the course of literary history, and its influence can still be felt today. By emphasizing the use of everyday language and personal experience, Wordsworth and Coleridge set the stage for a new wave of literary expression that would revolutionize the genre of poetry. This groundbreaking collection of poems marked a major shift away from the Neoclassical poetic conventions of the time and established a new and revolutionary style of poetry that would come to be known as Romanticism. The Lyrical Ballads, published in 1798 by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, is one of the most influential works of Romantic literature ever written.

Preface to lyrical ballads main points