Lyrical Ballads: 1798 - Softcover

Wordsworth, William; Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

Softcover

ISBN 10: 178543229X ISBN 13: 9781785432293

Publisher: Portable Poetry, 2016

Synopsis

Lyrical Ballads is a poetic collection by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, first published in 1798 and marked as the start of the English Romantic movement. Its immediate effect was modest, but over time it has become a landmark and changed the course of English literature and poetry. Wordsworth contributed most of the poems to this volume but those by Coleridge include perhaps his most famous - "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". Wordsworth and Coleridge set out to radically change the stuffy, learned and highly structured forms of 18th century English poetry in an effort to bring the true beauty of poetry to ordinary people by writing in everyday language. An emphasis was placed on the vitality of the conversational wording that the poor use to express their own lives. Using this language also helps assert the universality of human emotions. Even the title brings to mind rustic forms of art – the word "lyrical" links the poems with the ancient rustic bards and lends an air of spontaneity, while "ballads" are an oral mode of storytelling used by ordinary people. If the experiment with vernacular language was not enough of a departure from the norm, the focus on simple, uneducated country people as the subject of poetry was a signal shift to modern literature. One of the main themes of "Lyrical Ballads" is the return to the original state of nature, in which people led a purer and more innocent existence.

About this title

About the Author:

Coleridge and Wordsworth inaugurated the Romantic movement with this volume of poems. As different as they were, they both later proved to be important poets, critics, and philosophers, and their work permanently changed poetry in English.

About this edition

• Publisher: Portable Poetry
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 178543229X
• ISBN 13: 9781785432293
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 74