Lyrical Ballads

· Penguin UK
eBook
128
Pages
Eligible
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About this eBook

Published in 1798, Lyrical Ballads is a dazzling collaboration containing twenty-three poems by close friends, William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) - two major figures of English Romanticism. The volume heralded a new approach to poetry and expresses the poets' reflections on mankind's relationship with the forces of the world. Coleridge's contribution includes the nightmarish vision of 'The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere', one of the works for which he became best known, as well as the fantastical conversational poem 'The Foster-Mother's Tale' and the melancholic 'The Nightingale'. Wordsworth's 'We are Seven' depicts a child's naïve optimism in the face of the cruel mortality, while 'Goody Blake and Harry Gill' and 'Simon Lee' celebrate the simplicity and strength he perceived in country people, and 'Tintern Abbey' explores the healing powers of nature.

Published as part of the Penguin Poetry First Editions series in which the greatest collections of poetry in English will be published in their original form. All texts have been completely reset and some minor changes made to punctuation.

About the author

Coleridge (1772-1834) has been criticized as a political turn-coat, drug addict and plagiarist whose wrecked career left only a handful of magical early poems. But the shaping influence of his highly imaginative criticism is now generally accepted,and his position, along with Wordsworth (1770-1850), as one of the two great progenitors of the English Romantic spirit is assured. A great innovator, Wordsworth permanently enlarged the range of English poetry both in subject matter and treatment.


Michael Schmidt is Professor of English and Director of the Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University. He is the author of the critical history LIVES OF THE POETS (1999), THE STORY OF POETRY (five volumes, 2001-), and THE FIRST POETS: LIVES OF THE ANCIENT GREEK POETS.

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