Lyrical Ballads
Assigned by 1 of the 9 reading lists, catalogue entry only
- Written
- 1798, expanded 1800 and 1802
- Form
- Lyric poetry
- Language
- English
- Length
- Medium · 250 pp120 to 300 pages
- Difficulty
- Moderate2 of 5 for a first-year reader
We recommendLyrical Ballads 1798 and 1800Broadview Press, 2008Michael Gamer and Dahlia Porter print both editions complete, with the Preface, the Appendix and the 1802 additions.
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The small anonymous volume of 1798 by Wordsworth and Coleridge that is usually taken to begin English Romanticism. It opens with Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner and closes with Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey; between are ballads about beggars, mad mothers, an idiot boy and a girl who insists her dead siblings are still seven. The 1800 second edition added a volume of new poems and Wordsworth's Preface, which defends plain language and defines poetry as the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings recollected in tranquillity.
No reading guide yet
The catalogue entry above is complete: the dates, the form, the themes and every program that assigns Lyrical Ballads are verified against each program's published list.
What is missing is the part that takes real work: the summary, the key passages, and a recommended translation. The edition named below is the one most programs assign, so the buy links are useful already.