A comprehensive 1996 listing of authors and books read by William Wordsworth during the years of his greatest poetry.

A directory of authors and books read by Wordsworth before the age of thirty.

Thomas Owens explores some of the exultant visions inspired by Wordsworth's and Coleridge's close scrutiny of the night sky, the natural world, and the domains of science. He examines a set of scientific patterns drawn from natural, geometric, celestial, and astronomical sources which Wordsworth and Coleridge used to express their ideas about poetry, religion, literary criticism, and philosophy, and establishes the central importance of analogy in their creative thinking. Analogies prompted the poets' imaginings in geometry and cartography, in nature (representations of the moon) and natural history (studies of spider-webs, streams, and dew), in calculus and conical refraction, and in the discovery of infra-red and ultraviolet light. Although this is primarily a study of the patterns which inspired their writing, the findings overturn the prevalent critical consensus that Wordsworth and Coleridge did not have the access, interest, or capacity to understand the latest developments in nineteenth-century astronomy and mathematics, which they did in fact possess. Wordsworth, Coleridge, and 'the language of the heavens' reinstates many relationships which the poets had with scientists and their sources. Most significantly, the book illustrates that these sources are not simply another context or historical lens through which to engage with Wordsworth's and Coleridge's work but are instead a controlling device of the symbolic imagination. Exploring the structures behind Wordsworth's and Coleridge's poems and metaphysics stakes out a return to the evidence of the Romantic imagination, not for its own sake, but in order to reveal that their analogical configuration of the world provided them with a scaffold for thinking, an intellectual orrery which ordered artistic consciousness and which they never abandoned.

The British Aesthetic Tradition: From Shaftesbury to Wittgenstein is the first single volume to offer readers a comprehensive and systematic history of aesthetics in Britain from its inception in the early eighteenth century to major developments in Britain and beyond in the late twentieth century. The book consists of an introduction and eight chapters, and is divided into three parts. The first part, The Age of Taste, covers the eighteenth-century approaches of internal sense theorists, imagination theorists and associationists. The second, The Age of Romanticism, takes readers from debates over the picturesque through British Romanticism to late Victorian criticism. The third, The Age of Analysis, covers early twentieth-century theories of Formalism and Expressionism to conclude with Wittgenstein and a number of views inspired by his thought.

The most accessible edition of Wordsworth’s poetry and prose, prepared to meet the needs of both students and scholars. This Norton Critical Edition presents a generous selection of William Wordworth’s poetry (including the thirteen-book Prelude of 1805) and prose works along with supporting materials for in-depth study. Together, the Norton Critical Editions of Wordsworth’s Poetry and Prose and The Prelude: 1799, 1805, 1850 are the essential texts for studying this author. Wordsworth’s Poetry and Prose includes a large selection of texts chronologically arranged, thereby allowing readers to trace the author’s evolving interests and ideas. An insightful general introduction and textual introduction precede the texts, each of which is fully annotated. Illustrative materials include maps, manuscript pages, and title pages. “Criticism” collects thirty responses to Wordsworth’s poetry and prose spanning three centuries by British and American authors. Contributors include Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Felicia Hemans, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Lucy Newlyn, Stephen Gill, Neil Fraistat, Mary Jacobus, Nicholas Roe, M. H. Abrams, Karen Swann, Michael O’Neill, and Geoffrey Hartman, among others. The volume also includes a Chronology, a Biographical Register, a Selected Bibliography, and an Index of Titles and First Lines of Poems.

By examining the family and financial circumstances of Wordsworth’s early years, this illuminating biography reshapes our understanding of the great Romantic poet’s most creative period of life and writing. Features new research into Wordsworth’s financial situation, and into how the poet and his family survived financially Offers a new understanding of the role of his great unwritten poem ‘The Recluse’ Presents a new assessment of the relationship between Wordsworth and Coleridge

The Oxford Handbook of William Wordsworth deploys its forty-seven original essays to present a stimulating account of Wordsworth's life and achievement and to map new directions in criticism. In addition to twenty-two essays wholly on Wordsworth's poetry, other essays return to the poetry while exploring other dimensions of the life and work of the major Romantic poet. The result is a dialogic exploration of many major texts and problems in Wordsworth scholarship. This uniquely comprehensive handbook is structured so as to present, in turn, Wordsworth's life, career, and networks; aspects of the major lyrical and narrative poetry; components of 'The Recluse'; his poetical inheritance and his transformation of poetics; the variety of intellectual influences upon his work, from classical republican thought to modern science; his shaping of modern culture in such fields as gender, landscape, psychology, ethics, politics, religion, and ecology; and his 19th- and 20th-century reception-most importantly by poets, but also in modern criticism and scholarship.