The editor has included a full critical introduction as well as notes at the bottom of each page to help those who are reading the poems for the first time.

Since Its First Publication In February 1897 Herford S The Age Of Wordsworth Has Remained And Continues To Remain A Basic Book On European Romanticism In General And The English Romanticism In Particular. The Second Edition Was Printed In The Same Year A Few Months Later, In November 1897, And The Third Edition (Revised) Was Brought Out In The Year 1899. Since Then The Book Has Been Reprinted Many Times, And That Is A Standing Testimony To The Immense Popularity And Usefulness Of The Book.In The Preface To The First Edition Herford Wrote In December 1895, About A Year Before The Actual Publication Of The Book: The Task Of Presenting This Vast And Complex Literature With Some Semblance Of Order And Unity Has Been No Light One. But The Enormous Popularity Of The Book For Over A Century Is A Glowing Testimony To His Remarkable Success In Performing The Arduous Task He Had Set Upon Himself. His Analysis Of Romanticism, Which Is The Organizing Conception Of This Book Is As Sharp As It Is Illuminating And Offers A Clear Idea Of The Various Phases Of European Romanticism, A Movement That Swept Over Europe From Roughly The Middle Of The Eighteenth Century To The Middle Of The Nineteenth Century. What Deserves Special Mention Is The Fact That All Along Herford Assiduously Maintains The Distinction Between Literary History And Biography.While The Book Is Indispensable For Any Student Of English Literature, The Students Of The History Of Thought And Culture Studies Will Also Find This Luminous Book Delightfully Readable And Interesting.

Wordsworth's “The Prelude” is an autobiographical poem written in blank verse within which he reveals intimate details of his life. First published after Wordsworth's death in 1880 and titled by his widow Mary, “The Prelude” is Wordsworth's autobiographical magnum opus within which he offers the reader a plethora of personal details about his life. He started writing the when he was 28 and continued to work on it throughout his life. Changed and expanded many times, it was originally conceived as an introduction to “The Recluse”, a work which remains unfinished. This volume constitutes a must-read for all lovers of poetry and is not to be missed by fans and collectors of Wordsworth's seminal work. This new edition includes and introductory excerpt by Thomas De Quincey. William Wordsworth (1770–1850) was an English Romantic poet famous for helping to usher in the Romantic Age in English literature with the publication of “Lyrical Ballads” (1798), which he co-wrote with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He was poet laureate of Britain between 1843 until his death in 1850. Other notable works by this author include: “The Tables Turned”, “The Thorn”, and “Lines Composed A Few Miles above Tintern Abbey”.

“Though absent long, These forms of beauty have not been to me, As is a landscape to a blind man's eye: But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din Of towns in cities, I have owed to them, In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart” William Wordsworth's verse was the embodiment of the Romantic age, with its evocation of a unifying spirit running through all things. This collection brings together a rich and diverse selection of his works, from the epic autobiographical masterpiece The Prelude to much-loved shorter poems such as 'I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud' and 'She Was a Phantom of Delight'. Alongside his more personal and introspective compositions, poems such as 'Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey', 'She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways' and 'The Idiot Boy' demonstrate, in an era of political and social ferment, the manner in which Wordsworth, together with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, forged a revolutionary new poetic style through the publication of Lyrical Ballads – one that embraced the vernacular and subjects previously deemed unworthy of poetry – and thus changed the literary landscape of England for ever.

David Ellis attempts to clarify what is at once the most intriguing and baffling aspect of Wordsworth's great autobiographical poem.