ENGL 4320/ 5323- The Romantic Period & Studies in Romanticism

Written by the Editors of the Poetry Foundation, this article provides basic information and links to William Wordsworth's life and most notable poems.

Online exhibition of primary sources in the British Library about Wordsworth's Lake District.

The first proposal for the book Lyrical Ballads was for a two-volume work. The first would comprise two plays: William Wordsworth’s The Borderers and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Osorio. But this plan was changed so that the book was anonymous and would begin with the poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. In the preface Wordsworth describes the poem as ‘professedly written in imitation of the style, as well as the spirit of the elder poets’. The poem is introduced as The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere, in seven parts.