Title: About William Wordsworth | Academy of American Poets
Headings: William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth
Content: It was with Coleridge that Wordsworth published the famous Lyrical Ballads (J. & A. Arch) in 1798. While the poems themselves are some of the most influential in Western literature, it is the preface to the second edition that remains one of the most important testaments to a poet's views on both his craft and his place in the world. In the preface Wordsworth writes on the need for "common speech" within poems and argues against the hierarchy of the period which valued epic poetry above the lyric. Wordsworth's most famous work, The Prelude (Edward Moxon, 1850), is considered by many to be the crowning achievement of English romanticism. The poem, revised numerous times, chronicles the spiritual life of the poet and marks the birth of a new genre of poetry. Although Wordsworth worked on The Prelude throughout his life, the poem was published posthumously. Wordsworth spent his final years settled at Rydal Mount in England, travelling and continuing his outdoor excursions. Devastated by the death of his daughter Dora in 1847, Wordsworth seemingly lost his will to compose poems. William Wordsworth died at Rydal Mount on April 23, 1850, leaving his wife Mary to publish The Prelude three months later. poems
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Poetry
An Evening Walk (1793)
Descriptive Sketches (1793)
Borders (1795)
Lines Written Above Tintern Abbey (1798)
Lyrical Ballads (J. & A. Arch, 1798)
Upon Westminster Bridge (1801)
Intimations of Immortality (1806)
Miscellaneous Sonnets (1807)
Poems I-II (1807)
The Excursion (1814)
The White Doe of Rylstone (1815)
Peter Bell (1819)
The Waggoner (1819)
The River Duddon (1820)
Ecclesiastical Sketches (1822)
Memorials of a Tour of the Continent (1822)
Yarrow Revisited (1835)
The Prelude Or Growth of a Poet's Mind (Edward Moxon, 1850)
The Recluse (1888)
The Poetical Works (1949)
Selected Poems (1959)
Complete Poetical Works (1971)
Poems (1977)
Prose
Prose Works (1896)
Literary Criticism (1966)
Letters of Dorothy and William Wordsworth (1967)
Letters of the Wordsworth Family (1969)
Prose Works (1974)
The Love Letters of William and Mary Wordsworth (1981)
Essays
Essay Upon Epitaphs (1810)