Lyrical Ballads (Penguin Classics)

I am not a scholar in any sense of the word, but I feel the need to stress how wonderful this collection is."Lyrical Ballads" is often said to be the beginning of the Romantic Movement, a claim which I can neither refute or prove. What I can say for certain, though, is that it is filled with some of the most moving, thought provoking, and beautiful verses ever put on paper. Whether you are looking for something dark, something whimsical, an epic tale, or a sweet romance-there is something in the collection that will appeal to you. Wordsworth and Coleridge are both masters of their craft, a fact that they prove in "Lyrical Ballads"

This was a required book for my British Literature class. I wasn't that into this book, but the reading was to bad and was bearable. This would be for a person that loves poems.

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The format for this book is like someone evenly spaced all the type but forgot to have header pages between the poems.I recommend finding a different published version

The classics are still good today. It is worth buying just for The Rime and the Abbey poem.

The book was printed yesterday from a poorly formatted document. There are no page numbers, poems start in the middle of the page, and it's hard on the eyes. Just go to the bookstore. This print to order stuff is garbage.

When William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge published their collaborative volume of verse Lyrical Ballads in 1798 the reaction of critics was harsh. These critics hardly knew what to make of poems that violated the very essence of the classical mode then prevalent. This classical mode was based on the idea of decorum which required poets to write poetry only on a suitably lofty theme using equally lofty style. The focus on versification was for the poet to rhapsodize on things themselves and underlying all this was a core of reason and logic. Wordsworth and Coleridge were audacious enough to try to change not only the rules of the art but the art itself. They sought to move the center of interest from the subject to the poet. Whatever the poet may envision, the subject had to share center stage with nature and the poet's experiencing of the interplay of the three. To make this shift from objective subject to subjective experience, Wordsworth and Coleridge had the daunting task to redefine the previously held parameters that linked the two. Where poetry had once been the domain of the wealthy and the high-born, they sought to democratize the process by zeroing in on the other end of the political and social order: the poor, the low-born, the mental defective, and the innocent child. Wordsworth especially personified nature as a sentient background upon which his rustic subjects lived and breathed. A man, a child, a tree, or a flower all were but starting points in a poem. During the course of the poem, Wordsworth's subject would unexpectedly expand into a vast cosmic panorama. "Incidents from common life" became a mantra both in the Preface and in the poems proper. The more humble were the subjects, the more palpable the connection between poet and reader. Once Wordsworth had chosen his subject, he then used a "language really used by men." This language was to be rendered devoid of the typical ornaments of 18th century poetry. Nearly the entire range of poetic tropes and elaborate figures of speech was to be reduced to the bare minimum. One of the weaknesses in Wordsworth's logic was his overly vague use of the phrase "the language really used by men." He probably did not mean to imply that such rural usage had to include grammatical inconsistencies, redundancies, obscenities, and slang, all of which undoubtedly typified the true rural vernacular of the time. Wordsworth's human subjects were more often depicted as acting or simply being rather than speaking, but when they did speak, they use reasonably correct if colorful phrasing. Very likely, he meant to contrast the stilted and excessively flowery speech patterns of a previous generation of poetic speakers with the more verbally subdued subjects of his verse. Further, Wordsworth was guilty of several of the same charges he leveled at his predecessors. His own language all too often tilted toward the elaborately crafted fine tones worthy of Pope. This tendency toward his own use of poetic excessive is nowhere more evident than in the many passages where he waxes philosophically in language that is far removed from the language of men. There are other areas where Wordsworth is self-contradictory. In one paragraph, he declares that there is very little difference between poetry and prose yet he defends his use of writing in verse partly because meter has the effect of rendering a passage "regular and uniform." He seems to say that meter does indeed have its uses but that its very presence does not distinguish verse from prose. Wordsworth also criticizes the form and structure of a previous generation's use of classical poetic architectonics, yet he makes more than a little use of the 18th century tendency to express the poetic imagination via an idealization of a thoroughly grounded concept. In Wordsworth's defense, however, though he may have borrowed liberally from certain core concepts of what he perceived to be an enervating mode of verse, his intention was to blaze a new path of thought that would permit the language of poetry to resound in the ears of more than the poet and his high-born circle of friends. Wordsworth's Preface, then, is his attempt to express a faith, however contradictory it may in spots be, that would for the first time link the trio of poet, reader, and subject in a way that even today has significance.

Wordsworth and Coleridge's 'Lyrical Ballads' was revolutionary at the time of publication, and remains one of the most important volumes in the history of English Literature. The volume contains Coleridge's famous 'Ancient Mariner', as well as popular Wordsworth pieces such as 'Tintern Abbey' and 'Michael'.A first time reader may not quite understand what all the fuss us about, as some of Wordsworth's pieces can seem facile and at times banal, something contemporary critics savaged him for. To truly grasp the spirit of the volume the reader must take time to absorb Wordsworth's 'Advertisment' in which he outlines the 'experimental' nature of the volume, as a reaction against the the artificiality and 'innane phraseology' of the majority of popular poetry at the time.Wordsworth uses simple language to produce intimate sketches of ordinary people: a humble begger, an idiot boy, or the female vagrant, and he does so with great sensitivity and feeling, showing us that compassion and feeling of the simplest people makes them as worthy as any privileged man. No reader will soon forget the Lucy poems, in which the narrator recalls a girl he once loved, and mourns her tragic early death. Whether Lucy was ever a real person, let alone an object of Wordsworth's affection however is another matter.There are weak links in the collection such as 'Lines Written in Early Spring', which could be justifiably labelled 'namby-pamby' (a term Byron used to describe a certain type of Wordsworth poem). However, the most impressive piece in the whole collection must be Tintern Abbey, a poem which could never be labelled facile or 'namby pamby', it is a spiritual, philosophical, and profoundly moving poem rich with memorably powerful turns of phrase and an intoxicating pslamic quality. Tintern Abbey may very well sum-up Wordsworth's entire enterprise better than any other poem he penned. Study and understand 'Tintern Abbey' and you understand Wordsworth. As for Coleridge's 'Mariner', although it is an enchanting and strikingly original work, I share Wordsworth's assertion that it's character is somewhat at odds with the spirit of the collection.This edition is the finest you will find anywhere. It contains both the 1798 and 1800 editions, while including extensive supporting material. A real must-have for anyone interested in English Poetry.

Thank you Penguin, for publishing the original 1798 edition of Lyrical Ballads. Wordsworth was an inveterate revisor of his poems. Whenever Lyrical ballads was republished, he took the opportunity to revise poems, add extra ones and change the order in which the originals appeared. In this edition, we get his (and Coleridge's)original ideas. These are the poems of Wordsworth and Coleridge when they were young men and still radical in their poetics as well as their politics. Anyone interested in how these two giants of Romanticism and Radicalism developed, should own a copy of this edition of Lyrical Ballads. It is instructive to compare the version of the poems in this edition with those from the 1802 edition and later ones. Great stuff.

Essential for all lovers of language, beauty, grace and soul. In their time, Wordsworth and Coleridge were more than daringly bold or strange - this was revolutionary. Taking poetry back to the more earthy language of nature, with a deeply romantic humanity; these poems are more than simply verse. Their power still resonates across the centuries, and will be forever loved.

This was a present which was well received

Nicely uncluttered edition ... no distracting editors notes within the text, just a couple of pages at the end to set the work in context.

Recommend it if you are an A Level student studying lyrical ballads. Contains all of the poems that my class are studying, small but really good