William Wordsworth Books

This book presents work done over the past three decades of his life by one of the greatest of all English poets, William Wordsworth. The editors looked at over two- hundred and sixty manuscripts in deciding which version of the approximately two- hundred poems they wished to publish. They comment that it is usually the first versions of the poems which are the best, and that the constant revision of the poems ordinarily weakens them.
But the major point is that this is not the great, memorable poetry of Wordsworth that written in his early years. The freshness has gone, and with it much of the life of the poetry.
These poems are somehow more abstract, impersonal and programatic than the great poetry of the early years.
In a sense for the reader who is not first of all concerned with scholarly matters this volume is a sad one. For it is the record of a long slow decline more than anything else.

I found this book at a local book sale and gave it to a neighbor who had just been to Great Britain and was enjoying their limericks. I loved it so much, I had to find one for myself. It's a great book to put in the bathroom if you're not worried about someone hearing you laugh.

Richey and Robinson have compiled an excellent edition of Wordsworth and Coleridge's seminal Romantic text. In addition to the complete poems from the first edition of Lyrical Ballads published, they also provide intriguing commentary and copious contextual material that really gives you an excellent idea of just how influential this book was when it was first published. Highly recommended for any serious reader of Romantic poetry.

I purchased this item with several other books regarding William Shakespeare's Macbeth. This is the best Macbeth version out there for those who want to read and understand Macbeth. The pages have plenty of space to write notes and every scene is explained in regular words for those who are having difficulty with the material. Besides the book, the CD-rom is its best feature with games and tests. It makes it easier for adults and not just kids. If you're wondering how to approach Macbeth to even the difficult and the challenged students, this will be the best 14 bucks you ever spent. Don't be a fool! It's a bargain at that price. I remember reading Shakespeare's plays in books with plenty of footnotes to only complicate matters.

This set of essays by the master Shakespeare critic A.C. Bradley contains essays on :Poetry for Poetry's Sake, The Sublime, Hegel's Theory of Tragedy, Wordsworth, Shelley's View of Poetry, The Long Poem in the Age of Wordsworth, The Letters of Keats, The Rejection of Falstaff, Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare the Man, Shakespeare's Theatre and Audience.
I especially enjoyed the essay on Keats where Bradley focuses on the meaning of Beauty in Keats' letters. His appreciation of the remarkable character of Keats and how this is reflected both in the Letters and the Poems is instructive. The essay on Shakespeare the Man I found a bit speculative , yet another attempt to say something about the character of the character who mastered and made so many different characters. It is interesting that Bradley believes that Shakespeare is the poet who best exemplified Keats' prescription for what a poet ideally should be, one whose negative capability means he is within and without all the characters he creates. The essay on Wordsworth focuses on his originality especially in finding in the simplicities of daily life, and in simple characters the deepest expressions of human soul.
But there is much more than I have indicated here . This is a classic set of essays by one of the English literary traditions, most important critics.

I thoroughly enjoyed this tape. Beautiful poetry read by beautiful voices. It's wonderful for playing in the car on long journeys, it could even be the perfect antidote to road rage. Very relaxing.

The Interfact Shakespeare books are the best investment that I ever made. The accompanied books are clearly written without so much focus on footnotes. Every scene is clearly explained to the reader who might have gotten lost along the way to catch up to date. The book also features juicy tidbits of information on the sides but plenty of room for notetaking. This book is probably the best adapted for the student whether middle or high school or even adult to understand it.
The CD rom is the best part of this item. The CD rom has wonderful games, tests, and holds plenty of adventures for those students who might be bored easily. This is the best way to get them involved or interested in Romeo & Juliet.

As any fan of poetry will admit, Wordsworth is perhaps the central figure of poetry of the last two hundred years-- only Whitman contends with him in eminence. I love both (though I am partial to Keats!), and the fame of each is very just and in proportion with their merits.

Wordsworth is a musical poet, in that his verse flows with a beauty of language that has no rival I have yet encountered save perhaps Yeats or Shakespeare. Even the latter two, though better poets than Wordsworth overall in my opinion, fall slightly short of his music. I find many of his poems very easy to commit to memory, because of this quality:

She dwelt among th'untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove.
A maid whom there were none the praise
And very few to love.

A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye--
Fair, as a star when only one
Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and Oh!
The difference to me.

That is from memory, and I memorized it almost effortlessly; I suspect most can do the same because this poem (one of Wordsworth's "Lucy Poems", some of the best in all literature!) has a certain rhythm and flow to it that makes it as easily committed to memory as song lyrics.

There is in Wordsworth's poems a wonderful depth of thought, as well; common themes include lost youth, nature, and the poet's own mind (Wordsworth was notoriously egotistical). I find him a sadder poet than others do-- many read him as almost superficial or happy and joyous in nature, but I think this is too simplistic, as his poems resonate with a certain loss and regretful inwardness that really reverberates in my mind.

He is commonly considered the greatest of the Romantics, a consensus with which I disagree. I prefer Keats and Blake (Coleridge might have been as good, had he written more!), but Wordsworth has been more of an influence on later poets than either, and I certainly do not shy from calling him among the greatest.

There are too many lines in Wordsworth and too many long poems which today are largely unread. But there is also a body of work within that far vaster world of lines which is great. There are a whole group of poems , including many from 'The Lyrical Ballads' and certainly 'Intimations on Immortality ' and certainly 'Tintern Abbey' and certainly some of the great sonnets that constitute together one of the great poetic oeuvres.
Wordsworth combines the simple and sublime as no other poet does. His relation to Nature is deep and fresh, and yet too humble and moral, wild and beautiful. His direct experiential mode of meeting Nature in youth, is transformed into something far greater in his meditative and reflective relation to it . Wordsworth somehow brings to his meetings with nature a noble cast of mind. So too in his moral sentiment there is not a preaching narrowness, but a broad vision of something far more deeply interfused . Wordsworth in giving everyday life and perception a sense of the sublime is somehow a religious poet. The sense of something sublime that flows through all things is too a sense of something Divine.
Reading Wordsworth is receiving the sense that life too and our experience have a dimension of beauty and nobility which make them supremely worthwhile.
Reading Wordsworth one feels that one is lifted up to one's own better nature.
And this too when there are in him immortal lines, which like ' the best part of a good man's life is small acts of kindness and of love' are unforgettable.

This book is an excellent introduction to Wordsworth, a much-loved yet often-disparaged poet. As a fan of Romanticism, I adore Wordsworth and have dog-eared and battered this wonderful volume to death. Even cynics will be moved by Wordsworth's praise of the divine spirit that breathes in Nature and inspires men with her succoring benevolence. Don't miss the favorites "The Prelude" and "Titurn Abby" and the lesser-known "A Night-Piece," "Her Eyes are Wild," and "Nutting."