One of the century's most influential philosophers assesses a movement that changed the course of history in this unedited transcript of his 1965 Mellon lecture series. "Exhilaratingly thought-provoking".--"Times London".

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Dorothy Wordsworth's The Grasmere Journals, begun in May 1800 while at Dove Cottage, and continued for nearly three years until January 1803, is perhaps the best-loved of all journals. Noting the walks and the weather, the friends, country neighbors and beggars on the roads, William Wordsworth's marriage, the composition of poetry, and their concern for Coleridge, her words bring those first years to vivid and intimate life. This edition has been prepared directly from the manuscripts with undeciphered words clarified, first thoughts, later insertions and deletions indicated, and Dorothy's hasty punctuation largely restored. It also offers rich explanatory notes, containing much new detail on friends and family, the scarcely-known people of the Grasmere valley, the books that were read, and the connections with William Wordsworth's poetry.

In this second edition of William Wordsworth: A Life, Stephen Gill draws on knowledge of the poet's creative practices and his reputation and influence in his life-time and beyond. Refusing to treat the poet's later years as of little interest, this biography presents a narrative of the whole of Wordsworth's long life—1770 to 1850—tracing the development from the adventurous youth who alone of the great Romantic poets saw life in revolutionary France to the old man who became Queen Victoria's Poet Laureate. The various phases of Wordsworth's life are explored with a not uncritical sympathy; the narrative brings out the courage he and his wife and family were called upon to show as they crafted the life they wanted to lead. While the emphasis is on Wordsworth the writer, the personal relationships that nourished his creativity are fully treated, as are the historical circumstances that affected the production of his poetry. Wordsworth, it is widely believed, valued poetic spontaneity. He did, but he also took pains over every detail of the process of publication. The foundation of this second edition of the biography remains, as it was of the first, a conviction that Wordsworth's poetry, which has given pleasure and comfort to generations of readers in the past, will continue to do so in the years to come.

The sister of the poet records the daily account of their life which becomes also a reference to the poems of Wordsworth and relates these poems to specific entries.