Table of Contents

General Editor's Preface Some Important Events During the Lives of Wordsworth and Coleridge Introduction PART I: ANALYSING LYRICAL BALLADS Childhood and Growth of the Mind Imagination Old Age: A 'vital anxiousness' Society Issues: 'the mean and vulgar works of man' Nature and the Supernatural: 'the strangeness of it' PART II: THE CONTEXT AND THE CRITICS The Politics of Wordsworth and Coleridge Reading and Writing in Late Eighteenth-Century England The Poet as Critic and Theorist Dorothy Wordsworth and the Lake Poets Critical Responses to Lyrical Ballads Further Reading Index.

About the Author

JOHN BLADES currently lectures at the University of Leeds, UK.