The sonnets in this collection divide into two parts; the first 126 are addressed to a fair youth for whom the poet has an obsessive love and the second chronicles his love for the notorious "Dark Lady". In addition to the sonnets, this volume includes two lengthy poems on classical themes.

This volume of The Cornell Wordsworth contains eight collections of poems, mostly sonnets, published between 1820 and 1845. The River Duddon is a series of sonnets describing an imagined journey. Ecclesiastical Sketches, by far the largest group in the volume, consists entirely of sonnets and moves through historical time rather than topographical space. Memorials of a Tour on the Continent, 1820 is a record of an actual tour, containing when first published 23 sonnets and 15 other poems. In Yarrow Revisited, and Other Poems, celebrating another tour, all but three of the 26 poems are sonnets. Memorials of a Tour in Scotland, 1833 originally consisted entirely of sonnets. Memorials of a Tour in Italy includes five poems that are not sonnets. The remaining two groups, Sonnets upon the Punishment of Death and Sonnets Dedicated to Liberty and Order, which are both quite short, move through neither space nor time, but are thematically linked.An account of the genesis, dates of composition, and publication of each series is followed by reading texts, including all available variants. The poems are followed by Wordsworth's own notes and by the editor's notes. Photographic reproductions of manuscript pages of special interest, with transcriptions, are included for all the collections except Sonnets Dedicated to Liberty and Order.

Selected Poetry of William Wordsworth represents Wordsworth’s prolific output, from the poems first published in Lyrical Ballads in 1798 that changed the face of English poetry to the late “Yarrow Revisited.” Wordsworth’s poetry is celebrated for its deep feeling, its use of ordinary speech, the love of nature it expresses, and its representation of commonplace things and events. As Matthew Arnold notes, “[Wordsworth’s poetry] is great because of the extraordinary power with which [he] feels the joy offered to us in nature, the joy offered to us in the simple elementary affections and duties.”

In this second edition of William Wordsworth: A Life, Stephen Gill draws on knowledge of the poet's creative practices and his reputation and influence in his life-time and beyond. Refusing to treat the poet's later years as of little interest, this biography presents a narrative of the whole of Wordsworth's long life--1770 to 1850--tracing the development from the adventurous youth who alone of the great Romantic poets saw life in revolutionary France to the old man who became Queen Victoria's Poet Laureate. The various phases of Wordsworth's life are explored with a not uncritical sympathy; the narrative brings out the courage he and his wife and family were called upon to show as they crafted the life they wanted to lead. While the emphasis is on Wordsworth the writer, the personal relationships that nourished his creativity are fully treated, as are the historical circumstances that affected the production of his poetry. Wordsworth, it is widely believed, valued poetic spontaneity. He did, but he also took pains over every detail of the process of publication. The foundation of this second edition of the biography remains, as it was of the first, a conviction that Wordsworth's poetry, which has given pleasure and comfort to generations of readers in the past, will continue to do so in the years to come.

This book provides the essential contexts for an understanding of all aspects of the major English Romantic poet, William Wordsworth.