WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Oil Painting of William Wordsworth by William Boxall, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Dates: 1770-1850
Nationality: British
Literary Periods:
Eighteenth Century, 1700-1799
Nineteenth Century, 1800-1899
Romantic Period, 1780-1837
Literary Movements:
Lake Poets
Romanticism 1780-1837
RELATED AUTHORS
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William Blake
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Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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John Keats
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Percy Bysshe Shelley
SPACE
A hand-written manuscript of William Wordsworth's 'I wandered lonely as a cloud' also known as 'Daffodils' (1802) in The British Library Board, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
REFERENCE & BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Scribner Writers Series [Database]
Essays on the life and works of William Wordsworth, complete works and suggested reading bibliographies
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Literature Resource Center [DATABASE]Includes entries from Dictionary of Literary Biography, Contemporary Authors, Twayne's Authors Series, and Scribner Writers Series
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Literature Online (LION)Biographical overview, complete bibliography, journal articles, audio & video recordings, and recommended Web sites
RESEARCH & CRITICISM
Books, essays, and journal articles indexed in MLA International Bibliography 
[Database]
MLA International Bibliography is the definitive literary research database, indexing the most authoritative Wordsworth scholarship published in books and academic journals. MLA indexes and links to the entire JSTOR literary research collection as well as linking to many other full-text providers and the Colby College Libraries catalog. If you discover books or articles through MLA that are not available at Colby or through our lending partners, please request these items using your ILLiad Account.
You'll also want to check out...
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Victorian afterlife : postmodern culture rewrites the nineteenth century (2000) by Call Number: Miller PR461 .V5 2000ISBN: 0816633231 -
A Preface to Wordsworth (2000) by Probably the most famous of the Romantic poets, William Wordsworth worked with and influenced many of the leading poets of the age. This excellent introduction to his life and works sets his writing firmly in the context of his times. John Purkis provides an outline of Wordsworth's life and cultural background and their effect on his work, and examines his verse, from the earliest school poems to the final years.Call Number: Miller PR5881 .P8 1986ISBN: 0582437652 -
Unruly Times: Wordsworth and Coleridge in their time (1973) by Call Number: Miller PR5883 .B9 1973ISBN: 0844800406
PRIMARY SOURCES: TEXTS
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The Excursion (2007) by "I am convinced that there are three things to rejoice at in this Age--The Excursion Your Pictures, and Hazlitt's depth of Taste."--John Keats to Benjamin Robert Haydon"I have been reading Wordsworth's Excursion with many tears and prayers too. To me he is not only poet, but preacher and prophet of God's new and divine philosophy--a man raised up as a light in a dark time."--Charles KingsleyThe Excursion by William Wordsworth is a dramatic poem that advances largely through debate among the four main speakers: the Poet, the Wanderer, the Solitary, and the Pastor; the action of the poem seems to take place over five days. It was Wordsworth's second long poem, his public attempt at a "Great Poem," and his only work of any length to be read by most of his contemporaries. While The Prelude has found more favor with today's readers, The Excursion appealed to the Victorians, who embraced it, considering this influential work a source of spiritual strength in an uncertain world. This Cornell Wordsworth volume presents the first scholarly edition of The Excursion in half a century--and the first true scholarly edition of the original 1814 text. All manuscripts produced under the author's supervision are separately and completely transcribed in this edition. An introduction, a manuscript history, lists of printed verbal and nonverbal variants, extensive editors' notes, and selected photographs also chronicle the poem's full evolution. In short, this edition makes it possible, for the first time, to follow the complete compositional history of Wordsworth's epic.Call Number: Miller PR5858.A2 B87 2007ISBN: 9780801446535 -
Lyrical Ballads (2007) by Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge is a unique work of literature. first published in 1798, it marked a radical change in the direction of English Literature. Lyrical Ballads represented a movement away from the overwrought, highly formal and learned verse of the 18th century and in so doing ushered in a new, more democratic poetic era. Written in the language of the common man and addressing the concerns of the common man, Lyrical Ballads was the first - and remains the most - truly revolutionary collection of poetry, paving the way for the great Romantic poets - keats, Byron, Shelley et al. - and proving that, while there was no actual revolution on the ground, England could still be the most revolutionary of places. Lyrical Ballads was not a single phenomenon but a sequence of four editions spread over seven years; its appearance in English literature was not a historical moment but a sequence of moments - 1798, 1800, 1802, 1805. This edition - based on the 1805 edition, but looking back on each of the previous publications - shows how this collection developed, how it was refined and added to by the authors. No other edition on the market has such a wealth of key background information.Call Number: Miller PR5869 .L9 2007ISBN: 1405840609 -
