Lyrical Ballads (Routledge Classics)

Description: 'Must have come on like punk rock to a public groaning under the weight of over-cooked Augustanisms.' - 'The Guardian'. 'The majority of the following poems are to be considered as experiments. They were written chiefly with a view to ascertain how far the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasure.' - 'William Wordsworth, from the Advertisment prefacing the original 1798 edition'. When it was first published, 'Lyrical Ballads' enraged the critics of the day: Wordsworth and Coleridge had given poetry a voice, one decidedly different to what had been voiced before. For Wordsworth, as he so clearly stated in his celebrated preface to the 1800 edition (also reproduced here), the important thing was the emotion aroused by the poem, and not the poem itself. This acclaimed Routledge Classics edition offers the reader the opportunity to study the poems in their original contexts as they appeared to Coleridge's and Wordsworth's contemporaries, and includes some of their most famous poems, including Coleridge's 'Rime of the Ancyent Marinere.' Review: 'Must have come on like punk rock to a public groaning under the weight of over-cooked Augustanisms.' - The Guardian Table of Contents: Lyrical Ballads. Preface to the Routledge Classics edition by Nicholas Roe. Foreword. Foreword to the 1991 Edition. A Selected Bibliography and List of Abbreviations. Introduction. Lyrical Ballads, 1798. Advertisement. Poems. Lyrical Ballads, 1800. Love. Poems, Volume II. Preface 1800 Version (with 1802 Variants). Notes to the Poems. Appendix A: Text of Lewti; or, the Circassian Love-Chant. Appendix B: Wordsworth's Appendix on Poetic Diction from 1802 edition of Lyrical Ballads. Appendix C: Some Contemporary Criticism of Lyrical Ballads. Index of Titles. Index of First Lines.