Lyrical Ballads by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Lyrical Ballads by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The publication of Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge marked a radical change in the direction of English Literature. It represented a movement away from the overwrought, highly formal and learned verse of the eighteenth century, and in doing so ushered in a new, more democratic era of poetry. But despite this approach, and the subsequent popularity of poems such as Tintern Abbey and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the collection still presents difficulties, not least because it appeared as four significantly different editions between 1798 and 1805.

In his superb introduction to Lyrical Ballads, Michael Mason examines the collection's genesis, encouraging the reader to avoid the critical assumptions that exist around the text; his expert annotations elucidate the poems whilst retaining an enthusiasm for what Wordsworth termed their 'strangeness'. This revised publication of Mason's edition includes the complete listing from the final - and most comprehensive - 1805 edition, and the celebrated Preface of the 1800 edition, effectively a manifesto for the future of poetry. It also includes a new preface by John Mullan, which discusses the poems and highlights the value of Mason's approach. A new appendix by Daniel Karlin examines Wordsworth's revisions and what we might draw from them of Wordsworth's development as poet.

Lyrical Ballads was, and remains, a revolutionary collection of poetry. This annotated edition illuminates the poems themselves, and the forms in which they have been presented to the reader.

Professor Michael Mason was Professor of English at University College London and the author of, among others, The Making of Victorian Sexuality (1995). He died in 2003. Professor Daniel Karlin is Professor of English at the University of Sheffield. He is editor of the The Poems of Browning in the Longman Annotated English Poets series and the author of several books. Professor John Mullan is Professor of English at University College London and the author of numerous books. He is a regular pundit on The Late Review and a Guardian columnist.

“Lyrical Ballads, the collection that, in many accounts, launched Romanticism, has often been reprinted, but never in a wholly satisfactory edition...Michael Gamer and Dahlia Porter, in yet another splendid Broadview edition, have provided the solution that scholars and students have longed for. This remarkable volume provides both the 1798 and 1800 volumes in full. But more than this; in eight appendices, they provide an astonishing wealth of extra material. ... This is a volume that will surely become a standard in the field, a vital tool in teaching and scholarship. ...[It is] more than one could possibly have hoped for.” — Year’s Work in English Studies (2010)

“An edition we’ve all been waiting for, as teachers and as scholars—containing more than one would have thought possible to include in one volume. Herein is all the contextual material one could wish for: reviews from periodicals, including Southey’s and Jeffrey’s famous articles; discussions in correspondence, including comments by Coleridge, Lamb, Southey and Dorothy Wordsworth; critical discussions from Biographia and “My First Acquaintance with Poets”; poetic sources by Burger, Charlotte Smith and Helen Maria Williams; verse responses by Southey, Mary Robinson; even a section detailing how the poems were rearranged in Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s Collected Works. All this plus the texts of poems excluded from the 1798 and 1800 editions, a handy appendix plotting the poems’ locations on maps of Britain and the Lakes, and a magisterial introduction.” — Tim Fulford, Nottingham Trent University

Michael Gamer is Associate Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania and the co-editor of The Broadview Anthology of Romantic Drama.

Dahlia Porter is Assistant Professor of English at Vanderbilt University.