In 1808 Sir Arthur Wellesley (later the Duke of Wellington) inflicted a major defeat on Napoleon's forces at the battle of Vimiero, but promptly signed an armistice and convention (negotiated by Sir Hew Dalrymple with General Junot). The Convention permitted the evacuation of the latter's defeated army from Portugal to Bayonne - along with its equipment and its plunder. This disgraceful Convention was regarded by the people of Britain - government ministers excepted - as a betrayal of Britain's allies, Portugal and Spain. Some of the troops repatriated under this agreement fought against Sir John Moore's expeditionary force the following year, forcing his evacuation from northern Spain. Wordsworth's enormous pamphlet on the betrayal of the Iberian patriots by Britain's officer class is one of the most remarkable political documents produced by a Romantic poet. Here the text of W J B Owen's 1968 edition is republished for the bicentennial, with a critical symposium by Richard Gravil, Simon Bainbridge, David Bromwich, Timothy Michael and Patrick Vincent.

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Prose Works of William Wordsworth" (For the First Time Collected, With Additions from Unpublished Manuscripts. In Three Volumes) by William Wordsworth. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

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.

Contents include four keynote lectures - on Wordsworth and Coleridge by John Beer, on Byron by Angela Esterhammer and Kasahara Yorimichi, and on Harriet Martineau by Anthony John Harding - together with Judith Thompson's 'Bindman Lecture' on John Thelwall. In shorter papers, Monika Class writes on Coleridge and Kant; Laurent Folliot, Mandy Swann, Timothy Michael, Martina Domines Veliki, Patrick Vincent and Yu Xiao on Wordsworth; and Madeleine Callaghan on Shelley. A Feature of the book is five 'new' poems by the famous agitator John Thelwall, transcribed from the recently discovered Derby MS.

The Critical Heritage series collects together a large body of criticism on major figures in literature. Each volume presents the contemporary responses to a particular writer, enabling the student to follow the formation of critical attitudes to the writer's work and its place within a literary tradition. The carefully selected sources range from landmark essays in the history of criticism to fragments of contemporary opinion and little published documentary material, such as letters and diaries. Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included in order to demonstrate fluctuations in reputation following the writer's death. This new volume in the series includes criticism on the work of William Wordsworth during the period 1793-1820. Extremely wide-ranging in its coverage, over 250 diary extracts, letters, reviews, comments, and opinions by and about Wordsworth are gathered together here for the first time. An invaluable addition to any literary library.