Wednesday 22 March 2017

Wordsworth's LYRICAL BALLADS COLLECTION and it's PREFACE

CLICK BELOW FOR THE GUARDIAN REVIEW

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jul/19/lyrical-ballads-wordsworth-coleridge-stafford-review

Lyrical Ballads, in case you missed it, is, quite simply, possibly the single most important collection of poems in English ever published. It came out in two editions, one of 1798 and one of 1802, the large majority of the poems in each written by Wordsworth. There are enough differences of content between the two editions for them to be usually published, along with the critical apparatus, in one volume, one after the other. The 1798 edition has a short "advertisement" as an introduction, warning readers that the poems within "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". In other words, the high-falutin' poetic diction of the 18th century was renounced; plain speech, with as many monosyllables as possible, took its place, and nothing was ever the same again. Its effects are still with us, remarkably. The 1802 edition, much longer, also has a longer Preface, which amounts to a manifesto for what came to be known as Romanticism in particular; and poetry in general.