Customer Reviews (1)

The Best Edition Available
The back cover blurb says, "the edition we've all been waiting for, as teachers and scholars." I say the same for general readers. I've never been able to find both versions of the Lyrical Ballads (1798 and 1800) in single book. And there's a dynamic feel to the edition, since the reviews simply follow the poems, much in the same way they did in real life. The appendices are full and interesting, containing the 1802 Preface, all the poems considered for Lyrical Ballads but not included, the correspondence, etc. Don't miss the maps at the end of the book. They're terrific; and so is the introduction. ... Read more

Product Description
In this book Hugh Sykes Davies - novelist, poet and distinguished literary critic - addresses Wordworth's major poetry. Language, and its interaction with genius, is his central concern; but questions about Freud, Coleridge and the Romantic Imagination are raised and answered in the course of his stimulating survey. It reconstructs the poet's relationship with Mary Hutchinson and his sister Dorothy, focusing on the Dove Cottage ménage during Wordsworth's most productive years. A remarkable combination of analytic and empathic intelligence, this book should earn a place among the few essential studies of the poet. Hugh Sykes Davies died in 1984, and this 1987 book was prepared for publication by John Kerrigan, a colleague at St John's College, Cambridge, and Jonathan Wordsworth, chairman of The Dove Cottage Trust, to which the author gave many years support as Trustee. ... Read more

Product Description
This volume is the first to present Wordsworth's great poem in allthree of its forms. It reprints, on facing pages, the version of The Prelude that was completed in 1805, together with the much-revised work published after the poets death in 1850. In addition, the editors include the two-part version of the poem, composed in 1798-99. Each of these poems possesses distinctive qualities and values; to read them together provides an incomparable chance to observe a great poet composing and re-composing, throughout a long life, his major work.There are no fewer than seventeen manuscripts of The Prelude in theWordsworth library at Grasmere. Working with these materials, theeditors have prepared an accurate reading version of 1799 and havenewly edited from manuscripts the texts of 1805 and 1850—thus freeingthe latter poem from the unwarranted alterations made by Wordsworth'sliterary executors. The editors also provide a text of MS. JJ(Wordsworth's earliest drafts for parts of The Prelude) as well astranscriptions of other important passages in manuscript whichWordsworth failed to include in any fair copy of his poem. The textsare fully annotated, and the notes for all three versions of ThePrelude are arranged so that each version may be read independently.The editors provide a concise history of the texts and describe theprinciples by which each has been transcribed from the manuscripts.

There are many other aids for a thorough study of The Prelude and itsbackground. A chronological table enables the reader to contextualizethe biographical and historical allusions in the texts and footnotes.

"References to The Prelude in Process" presents the relevant allusions tothe poem, by Wordsworth and by members of his circle, from 1799 to1850. Another section, "Early Reception," reprints significant commentson the published version of 1850 by readers and reviewers.

Finally, there are seven critical essays by Jonathan Wordsworth, M. H.Abrams, Geoffrey H. Hartman, Richard J. Onorato, William Empson,Herbert Lindenberger, and W. B. Gallie. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

A beautiful epic, with an English Romantic spin
It is interesting that Wordsworth should never have published his most impressive poem.Norton calls it the "most original long poem since Milton's Paradise Lost," and it certainly deserves to be ranked alongside the master of the English epic.This poem was not published until after Wordsworth's death in 1850, and there are several versions of it (which are included in this book).The 1798-1799 version is very short, but the 1805 is expanded and includes many epic devices which Wordsworth borrowed from Milton and others.The 1850 version is basically a revised 1805 edition.It is not necessary that you read all three versions of the poem to understand its power, but it is useful to have them all at hand like this.

The Prelude is an autobiography about Wordsworth's early life.It is full of sublime images of the world through the eyes of a Romantic, and includes some of the most beautiful imagery ever set to verse in English (I believe).Wordsworth's reflections about the evils of ambition and self-absortion, among other things, are also very powerful.

This poem has been widely quoted by such Christian authors as CS Lewis, and has been admired by many great English poets.It is truly a masterpiece, an epic poem done in the tradition of English Romanticism.You can get this poem in many compilations, but usually in abridged form.This edition features the poem in its entirety, and in three version.This poem is essential to any study of English Romanticism.

five stars
This book articulates a vision of the world and of the emotions it inspires in a cerebral, yet densely imaged poem.Wordsworth did not want the poem published for fears that it was too self-absorbed; adressing earlier reviews that have made this complaint, it is true that the poem is self absorbed in that it presents the vision of the world from an individual perspective...as all poems do. I find Eliot's use of quotations and footnotes drawing on his banks of memory and reading to be far more self-absorbed than this: a poem intended to communicated clearly. It is true that it is personal in that it was written to a friend with devotion and love, but this does not detract from the power of the language, the power of the vision, and the impact of the poem upon the age(s).As for comparing Wordsworth to a modernist, that comparison is difficult to make as the modernists rejected the romantic's formal language and optimism (both present in the prelude, despite moments of recognition of a bleak 'wasted' world).

Wordsworth: Poet of Anxiety
I entirely disagree with the prevailing reviews on The Prelude.We have no other secular poem about the futile search for meaning in a meaningless world so fine as the Prelude:it is the Paradise Lost of those who searchor long for a fleeting significance.What is significant about the poem isnot that we believe what Wordsworth claims about the power of nature andthe mind, but that he tried so hard to search out some sense of meaning andorder-Wordsworth is the first Modernist writer before there was a namefor his anxiety.This edition is wonderful in the way that it presents the1805 and 1850 versions on opposite pages-it also contains the 1799version- a real tour de force.Read The Prelude, read it carefully andtake it too heart-there is no Song of Myself without Wordsworth's humaneyet Promethean quest for significance.

self obsessed and dull
I used to like the Romantics - but this revealed to me the extent to which they were all immersed in their own selves so much they couldn't see beyond the individual.Wordsworth is long-winded and dull in linguistic terms,but admittedly some of the imagery (boat-stealing episode) is inspired.Itis, fundamentally, all about himself though, and traces his own poeticgrowth which is interesting as a topic, but not the way Wordsworth does it. He throws in a few token pictures of the poor, who he was so concernedabout, but these tend to be superficial compared to his own self. Dull,dull, dull, a complete waste of time.If you have to read it for a course,get the york notes or only read the 1799 version ... Read more

Product Description
First published in July 1850, shortly after Wordsworth's death, The Prelude was the culmination of over fifty years of creative work. The great Romantic poem of human consciousness, it takes as its theme the growth of a poet's mind': leading the reader back to Wordsworth's formative moments of childhood and youth, and detailing his experiences as a radical undergraduate in France at the time of the Revolution. Initially inspired by Coleridge's exhortation that Wordsworth write a work upon the French Revolution, The Prelude has ultimately become one of the finest examples of poetic autobiography ever written; a fascinating examination of the self that also presents a comprehensive view of the poet's own creative vision. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

One of the All-Time Greatest Poems
The Prelude is William Wordsworth's masterpiece and one of the greatest poems of all-time. It began as a relatively short, two part work finished in 1799 but was expanded to fourteen books by 1805. Wordsworth labored over it until 1839, polishing, making a few additions based on later events, and altering some of his more radical statements about the divinity of nature and mind to fit his increasing religious conservatism. He published several excerpts at various times, but the whole was not released - indeed, hardly even known - until shortly after his 1850 death. The edition has all three versions plus an early draft, giving readers the full experience.

The Prelude is now seen as his crowning achievement, at once his art's prelude and culmination. The work is of course an epic and highly influenced by prior ones from Spenser and Milton, but like Wordsworth's other major early work, it is ground-breakingly original. The subtitle describes it succinctly:"Growth of a Poet's Mind." After deciding to be a poet, Wordsworth surveyed his life to find the events, thoughts, and feelings qualifying him for the role, and this is the result. Though in verse, it gives an overview of his life to that point much like a traditional autobiography, but his real focus is internal. Wordsworth details what molded his mind - and perhaps more importantly, his heart - for poetry. Anyone curious about his life will naturally find it invaluable, and it is also of great value to those interested in the era. Wordsworth saw many important events, including the French Revolution nearly at first hand, and relates them vividly; this is an excellent primary source for both historians and biographers. Perhaps more notably, and at least more unusually, we also get a profoundly lifelike, detailed glimpse of rural England in the late eighteenth/early nineteenth centuries. Everything from speech to landscape is on display, and we get a fascinating glimpse of the awe felt by someone from such a place first beholding London, France, and the Alps. All this gives substantial value to the poem even for non-fans. However, intriguing and worthy as all this is, the real treasure is indeed watching the growth of Wordsworth's mind. Whether we care about or agree with him is irrelevant; the poem is profoundly searching, exploring the spiritual and philosophical questions haunting all intelligent people. The honesty, insight, and sheer reach are mesmerizing. We feel for and with Wordsworth as he struggles with identity and life because it is our struggle; very few works, especially in poetry, are as moving and thought-provoking at the same time. The poetry itself is also top-notch; perfectly wrought and eminently quotable, this blank verse stands with Shakespeare's and Milton's as the greatest in English. This is essential for anyone even remotely interested in English poetry.

Useful for Study of a Great Epic
Wordsworth is a great poet, one of the greatest.The Prelude is also one of the greatest English epics.This edition, edited by Jonathan Wordsworth--Wordsworth's own progeny, offers readers a chance not only to read the poem in its entirety but also to compare different versions (the posthumously published 1850 version has 14 "books"), which is helpful in understanding the development of the poem and of Wordsworth.

In The Prelude, Wordsworth is his own epic hero, and the traditional epic journey is more an interior journey, but the autobiographical text helps us to see Wordsworth as someone who was meant to be a poet, indeed as someone who was created for that purpose.His message of humanity's bond with nature, through which we have access to the divine, continues to be relevant to today's readers, perhaps even more relevant as we become more mechanized and urbanized, moving further and further away from nature, a move Wordsworth anticipates with regret. Wordsworth as a poet and as a man tends to grow on readers willing to take the time to get to know him. His genius is surpassed perhaps only by Shakespeare, and his wisdom and vision help make readers better for the journey into his mind and heart.

It was for this....
"A good deal of [Wordsworth's poetry], perhaps most of it, is very dull, like a long walk on a grey day. But just as somewhere on that walk there might be a sudden and superb flash of beauty, so in Wordsworth's poetry there are short passages, perhaps only a line or so, that are miraculous. An apparently simple unadorned phrase will suddenly blaze in the reader's imagination. These moments of his, once experienced, are never forgotten, and we never entirely lose our response to them." - J. B. Priestley. Literature and Western Man (Collins, 1960).

The Prelude contains many of these unforgettable moments - certainly more than "short passages". Besides being a wonderful poem, the work gives the reader a unique insight into the life of the poet through his own words. The four versions give us a chance to appreciate how the poet grows and develops and how his views change over time. In many cases, changes to the 1805 manuscript appearing in the final 1850 publication do not seem to be improvements at all, but attempts to cover up previous indiscretions or to subdue outbursts of passion. The sentiment of the newer portions is often far from that of the earlier drafts. The two much shorter initial drafts, "Was It for This" and the Two-part Prelude of 1799, are very different to the later books and show a superb command of language. Not surprisingly, Wordsworth's relationship with nature is a major theme throughout the poem. The direct effect of growing up in the countryside is perhaps revealed more plainly than in his other poems and a quasi-religious philosophy is evident.

This Penguin version seems to me to offer as much as one could want for a non-academic reader. The 120-odd pages of notes are quite sufficient to understand the poem thoroughly.

This book will appeal to anyone who enjoys romantic poetry, nature or autobiography. A book to be savoured, not rushed. Highly recommended.

an all-star book
This book is a roller-coater of litereral passages that keep you on the edge of your chair.It's a real page turner. ... Read more

Product Description
This title provides a comprehensive guide to studying Wordsworth at undergraduate level. William Wordsworth continues to be one of the most popular and widely studied poets from the nineteenth century. This Reader's Guide provides an overview of Wordsworth's career, which began in obscurity, persisted through ridicule, and culminated finally in popular success and acclaim. It introduces readers to the literary, philosophical, and political contexts crucial to understanding Wordsworth's poetry, offering fresh approaches for reading his most important poems in light of recent developments in literary studies while also spotlighting traditional ones. This guide explores the reasons why Wordsworth continues to be the leading figure of British Romantic literature. It is an indispensable guide to studying Wordsworth's poetry, language, contexts and criticism. "Continuum Reader's Guides" are clear, concise and accessible introductions to key texts in literature and philosophy. Each book explores the themes, context, criticism and influence of key works, providing a practical introduction to close reading, guiding students towards a thorough understanding of the text.They provide an essential, up-to-date resource, ideal for undergraduate students. ... Read more

Product Description

The figure of William Wordsworth looms over the nineteenth century like a presiding genius. Sage, seer, and Poet Laureate, Wordsworth was revered by his Victorian contemporaries as a writer of tender, lyrical poetry, a controversial challenger of social and artistic convention, a devoted champion of country life, and the spiritual founder of the conservation movement.

Customer Reviews (1)

The closest look at the everyday life of Wordsworth
Adam Kirsch writing in the 'New Yorker' reports that this biography does an outstanding job in covering the details of Wordsworth's everyday life. It contrasts with other biographies in giving equal focus to the long years after he had written his great works.
Kirsch finds the book's limitation is that it gives equal time and attention to a host of Wordsworth's activities while not focusing on his Poetry. For the Poetry is what makes Wordsworth important to us today, and not the long, and rather dull life story.
Wordsworth's radical youth, when it was bliss to be alive, and to be young was very heaven, his travels to France, his love- affair with Annette Vallon, the birth of his daughter all are in the background of the great decade of poetic work begun in the 1790's. Kirsch maintains that this great period of writing is one in which Wordsworth is still between worlds, torn by his disillusionment with the French Revolution. It is a time before he settles into being the Tory conservative, and eventually respected and admired poet laureate of England.
The greatness of Wordsworth which Kirsch sees in great part as connected with a kind of democratic religious vision in which he sees into , sympathizes with and portrays the kind of ordinary and not - so- ordinary souls outside the realm of previous English poetry comes to a climax in this period of uncertainty.
Wordsworth's special connection with Nature, the whole sublime and yet deeply passionate and calm tone of his greatest poetry provide a kind of consoling religious vision for many of his great and devoted readers. These include Emerson, and most especially John Stuart Mill .Mill's account in his 'Autobiography' of being saved from his terrible depression and loss of the sense of meaning of his own life, through his reading of Wordsworth is one telling example of how powerful the effect of Wordsworth's poetry.
This biography according to Kirsch gives detailed insight into all of Wordsworth's closest relations, including what is one of the most remarkable and productive literary friendships of all time, Wordsworth's close connection with Coleridge.
For all students of Wordsworth, for all those who would know his life in the most detailed way possible this work is indispensable. ... Read more

Product Description
William Wordsworth is the most influential of the Romantic poets, and remains widely popular, even though his work is more complex and more engaged with the political, social and religious upheavals of his time than his reputation as a 'nature poet' might suggest. Outlining a series of contexts - biographical, historical and literary - as well as critical approaches to Wordsworth, this Introduction offers students ways to understand and enjoy Wordsworth's poetry and his role in the development of Romanticism in Britain. Emma Mason offers a completely up-to-date summary of criticism on Wordsworth from the Romantics to the present and an annotated guide to further reading. With definitions of technical terms and close readings of individual poems, Wordsworth's experiments with form are fully explained. This concise book is the ideal starting point for studying Lyrical Ballads, The Prelude, and the major poems as well as Wordsworth's lesser known writings. ... Read more

Product Description
In this affordable and versatile selection, editor George W. Meyer presents Wordsworth's Preface to the Lyrical Ballads followed by forty-six of his best poems and sonnets. Also included are an introduction, a list of principal dates in the life of Wordsworth, and a bibliography. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

beautifully done
I had forgotten how beautiful Wordsworth's poetry is. This recording, by a group of talented and skilled British actor-readers, brings the poems to life. It is a delight from beginning to end. Find any excuse you can to give it to someone as a gift: it will be one that they will enjoy for many, many years.

The greatness of Wordsworth as a poet
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. ... Read more

Product Description
First published in London in 1888, this is the complete works of one of the great poets of English Romanticism in ten charming, compact volumes.WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-1850), Britain's Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death, limned some of the finest verse in the English language, tender poetry on human love and the natural world-some of his most memorable lines describe England's beautiful Lake District, where he spent much of his life, as filtered through his sensitive and serious heart.Beloved of readers for centuries, Wordsworth's timeless verse is a treasure to enjoy for the nourishment of one's own soul, and to share with other lovers of language. ... Read more

Product Description
William Blake was an engraver, painter and visionary mystic as well as one of the most revolutionary of the Romantic poets. His writing attracted the astonished admiration of authors as diverse as Wordsworth, Ruskin, W.B.Yeats, and more recently beat poet Allen Ginsberg and the 'flower power' generation. He is one of England's most original artists whose works aim to liberate imaginative energies and subvert 'the mind-forged manacles' of restriction. This volume contains many of his writings, including: Songs of Innocence, Songs of Experience, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and a generous selection from the Prophetic Books including Milton and Jerusalem. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

excellent!
Fellow Readers,

The book itself (selection of poetry) was perfect. The book's physical condition was excellent and the delivery was very fast. I am so grateful for this "used book" service available to all of us.

Kate Greene

The Selected Poems of William Blake
This is not "new" reading for me, but my previous copy is worn to shreds.My only issue with this particular volume is that there are no pictures of Blake's amazing artwork.Perhaps when I am a little more flush I'll get the book that does have it. ... Read more

Product Description
William Wordsworth (1770-1850) is one of the most important and enduringly popular of all the English poets. His unique relationship with the poet and political activist Samuel Taylor Coleridge, founded in the political and social ferment of 1795, produced a revolution in literature, resulting in the joint volume, Lyrical Ballads (1798-1805)--a landmark in the history of English Romanticism. This selection, chosen from the Oxford Authors critical edition, includes all Wordsworth's finest lyrics, and a large sample of The Prelude (1805), his extraordinary autobiographical poem in blank verse and the first truly great achievement of a new era in English poetry. ... Read more

Product Description
William Wordsworth's long poem The Prelude is a fascinating work-as autobiography, the fruit of many attempts at understanding the formative period of Wordsworth's life; as a fragment of historical evidence from the revolutionary and post-revolutionary years; as an unstable literary text, which mutated through at least five discernable versions from 1799-1839; and as a poem offering the pleasures of blank verse in a variety and to an intensity unmatched in English non-dramatic poetry. In this collection, leading Wordsworth scholar Stephen Gill, gathers together thirteen influential essays on The Prelude. The volume as a whole is a useful and inspiring companion for students and general readers of Wordsworth's greatest, but most demanding poem. ... Read more

Product Description
Specially commissioned essays cover the important aspects of Wordsworth's life and work. The volume examines his poetic achievement with chapters on poetic craft, the origin of his poetry and the challenges it presents. The book offers students informative supplementary material on Wordsworth's life and critical reception. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Great companion to Wordsworth
Probably more for the serious reader than the high school student who is looking for a quick understanding of Wordsworth, it's worth your time to read through this carefully.Gill writes with passion and knowledge of one of the greatest poets of all time. ... Read more

Product Description
Volume: 1Publisher: London : MethuenPublication date: 1908Notes: This is an OCR reprint. There may be typos or missing text. There are no illustrations or indexes.When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. You can also preview the book there. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Natural piety
This selection is divided into four sections: The Poets Life, Memorial Poems, Sonnets, Narrative Poems. It contains many of the greatest and most memorable lyrics of Wordsworth. It is a fine introduction to his work.
Wordsworth is a poet whose connection with the natural world was cardinal to his poetry. One can feel often in his perception of the outdoor world, a soul enhanced by the very act of seeing. Much of this seeing was done in walking. And his famous definition of poetry as ' the overflow of powerful emotion recollected in tranquillity' hints that that powerful emotion came often through seeing and being in the natural world. ... Read more

Product Description
This edition collects every piece of verse known to have been published by the poet himself, or of which he authorized the posthumous publication.Besides explanatory notes on the texts, the book includes the poet's own Notes to the 1849-50 edition and his Prefaces. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Medicine for a troubled age
Despite his status of 'whipping boy'with much of the academic community - the 'icon' to be smashed- Wordsworth's literary merits endure. Or rather - his power to inspire, endures. Wordsworth made an important diction - between the public and the people. The pseudo-sophisticated wish to pander to fashionable modes of literary criticism; they will try to convince you that Wordsworth's poetry is passe, the 'tin god' of gemutlich Victorian dreams. Meanwhile, the 'people' still read W, and they always will - especially those who turn to the bosom of nature to nourish the spirit. J.S. Mill cured himself of chronic melancholia after opening himself to Wordsworth's work -the prospect (or 'project') - it endeavours to lead us toward. This text is De Selincourt's judicious editorial work. Otherwise expensive, this p/back version is worth buying.Be warned tho', Wordsworth did not live to see 'The Prelude' published.For that, Stephen Gill's ed is much to be recommnded.

WORDSWORTH A GEM OF HUMAN.
HE IS INDEED THE MEMORABLE OF THE FINNEST ARTS THAT WORLD HAD PRODUCE.HE IS A RARE GEM OF ALL THE JEWELS.WELL INDEED HIS WORKS WERE ONE OF THE RARE COMODITIES IN THIS PRESENT WORLD OF LETURATURE. ... Read more

Product Description
This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's preservation reformatting program. The Library seeks to preserve the intellectual content of items in a manner that facilitates and promotes a variety of uses. The digital reformatting process results in an electronic version of the text that can both be accessed online and used to create new print copies. This book and thousands of others can be found in the digital collections of the University of Michigan Library. The University Library also understands and values the utility of print, and makes reprints available through its Scholarly Publishing Office. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

There are many faces to poerty
I am always interested in reading poetry, I have loved it since childhood.However I do not find the wonder many attribute to Wordsworth and some of the other past poetic icons professors and/or instructors at many colleges and universities attempt to push down their students throats.

Yes, I grew up with English teachers rambling off a list of names they felt were the great poets of the past (lists I am sure they were given, fed, or forced to accept, by theirprofessors and instructors who themselves were force to accept too.I have always wondered who it was that originally decided that these few poets and their poetry were any better than anyone elses.I find the common man or women in society can spill forth just as majestic and just as meaningful lines of poetry as any of these so called greats.

To date I still wonder who those mysterious deciders of what is or is not good poetry are, and why they missed the mark so badly.

Don't get me wrong I enjoy reading anyones poems and I try my best to find something in every poem that inspires my soul or makes me think.I have done so in the poems of this book as well.But I do not find the greatness that some seem to find or are told they should find, in all of these works.A few of them are just tedious nonthinness.

As a matter of fact I can pick up a copy of the American Poetry Anthology published by Robert Nelson every year or so, that has page after page, after page of average everyday citizen's poems in them and find works that far surpass the works (as far as touching my very soul with meaning and insight) found in this book of Wordsworth.

And I hardly think anyone trying to make the case that only a sophisticate (here place the word elitist if it suits you) can find the greatness of the works here presented.That is an valid argument and would be quite egotistical and condensending now wouldn't it?

I in fact liked this book, but it did not move me like Frost and many others have.I have found in my life hundreds of poems and dozens of poets who relay their artistic prowess far better than Wrodsworth ever did.now I know why the book is priced as it is. Interesting but not awe inspiring.

The best Wordsworth thought and said
This is not an edition for scholars, nor for the reader who wishes to know the great body of Wordsworth's poetry. It contains most of the great poems so frequently anthologized, including the two longer Odes, the Intimations Ode, and Tintern Abbey. It also includes much of the most memorable shorter work.
Wordsworth is one of my favorite poets. His simple clear language, his quiet reflectiveness, his direct and arresting descriptions of nature, his deeply moral relation to life, his sublime metaphysical reflectiveness, his tranquility, his presentation of recollecting self at the heart of his work, his philosophical sublimity and clarity, his sympathetic relation to ' common people' his nobility of utterance, his capacity for creating great and memorable lines are all evidenced here.

Wordsworth's Greatest Period, 1798-1806 - Dover Edition
The remarkable English Romantic Poets - William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Keats - remain among the favorite poets in the English language. This litte Dover edition, titled Favorite Poems, is a good introduction to much of Wordsworth's greatest poetry.

Wordworth's poetry is quite accessible to the modern reader.There is no need for extensive familiarity with Greek and Roman mythology, nor for knowledge of archaic poetic terms. Footnotes and a glossary are not required.

I have read these 39 poems comprising the Dover collection three or four times over the last few years.With each reading I find Wordsworth's questioning of man's relationship to nature and "what man has made of man" to be as relevant today as it was two centuries ago.

My favorites in this collection include:

Composed Upon Westminister Bridge Sept. 3, 1802 - Elegiac Stanzas - I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud - In London, September 1802 - Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey - Lines Written in Early Spring - London, 1802 - Mutability - My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold - Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent's Narrow Room - Nutting - Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood - On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic - Resolution and Independence - Scorn Not the Sonnet - She Dwelt Along the Untrodden Ways - The World is Too Much with Us, Late and Soon.

The other poems in this collection are:

The Affliction of Margaret - Anecdote for Fathers - Character of the Happy Warrior - Expostulation and Reply - Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg - I Traveled Among Unknown Men - The Idiot Boy - Inside of King's College Chapel, Cambridge - Lucy Gray - November 1806 - Ode to Duty - The Pet Lamb - She Was a Phantom of Delight - A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal - The Solitary Reaper - Strange Fits of Passion I Have Known - Thought of a Briton on the Subjugation of Switzerland - Three Years She Grew in Sun and Shower - To Sleep - To Toussaint L'Ouverture - We Are Seven.

For the reader looking for a more extensive collection of Wordsworth's poetry, explanatory notes, and some poetic criticism, I recommend the hardbound Everyman's Library "Selected Poems", edited by Damian Davies. ISBN 1-85715-245-X

Review from a California High school student
Plenty of literary works to refer to. Great index. Great book for thrift shopping.

Book & tape ... what better way to LISTEN to poetry
I was never much of a reader of poetry, until I discovered poetry on audio cassette.Hearing it spoken gives life to the written word.It's like watching and listening to Shakespeare rather than reading it ... the rhythmof the words come alive!It's how great poetry is meant to be appreciated. ... Read more

Product Description
The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: English poetry; Poets, English; Ballads, English; Poetry / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; Poetry / General; Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; Literary Criticism / Poetry; Music / Genres ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Awful
Poems are in paragraphs - It's almost impossible to enjoy. No line breaks!Please try to find Wordsworth elsewhere.

Don't take up space in your Kindle----
with these flawed free products.Can't really read them with any enjoyment; the poems are paragraphs,revisions in the middle, numbers in the middle;unless you are well acquainted with Wordsworth before downloading this---one would miss the beauty of his poetry.I'm gong to delete them. ... Read more

Product Description
Edited with an Introduction by David Stuart Davies 'I saw something terrible rising up through the middle of the 'defence'. It rose with a steady movement. I saw it pale and huge through the whirling funnel of cloud - a monstrous pallid snout rising out of that unknowable abyss. It rose higher and higher. Through a thinning of the cloud I saw one small eye... a pig's eye with a sort of vile understanding shining at the back of it.Thomas Carnacki is a ghost finder, an Edwardian psychic detective, investigating a wide range of terrifying hauntings presented in the nine stories in this complete collection of his adventures. Encountering such spine-chilling phenomena as 'The Whistling Room', the life-threatening dangers of the phantom steed in 'The Horse of the Invisible' and the demons from the outside world in 'The Hog', Carnacki is constantly challenged by spiritual forces beyond our knowledge. To complicate matters, he encounters human skullduggery also. Armed with a camera, his Electric Pentacle and various ancient tomes on magic, Carnacki faces the various dangers his supernatural investigations present with great courage.These exciting and frightening stories have long been out of print. Now readers can thrill to them again in this new Wordsworth series. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Very atmospheric
Perhaps limited in scope, these stories are little gems of descriptive writing, and clearly influenced Lovecraft.

Good collection
All but a couple of Carnacki's cases have been long neglected by publishers and once again it's Wordsworth to the rescue with this collection.Most of the tales are of the supernatural variety, though one or two have somewhat logical explanations just to keep the reader off balance."The Hog" and "The Whistling Room" are the best known tales, but "Gateway of the Monster" and "Horse of the Invisible" are just as good.The others aren't bad either.There are faults the stories, one being Carnacki doing the narration himself, which lessens the suspense since we know he escaped the dangers. Another is his "penatcle of light" used to ward off evil, which doesn't work half the time and comes off as a silly gimmick.At least, despite his ego, Carnacki is willing to confess being just as terrified of what's going on as the people he's trying to help.
As ghost hunters go, Carnacki is not on the level of Blackwood's John Silence, but he deserves to be rediscovered.Now that Wordsworth has done that let's hope they bring out stories of Jules DeGrandin, Flaxman Low, Barnabas Hildreth and more of the once popular but now forgotten occult detectives.

Out you go!
This book prints all the Thomas Carnacki stories written by W.H. Hodgson.Carnacki was a detective who investigated "supernatural" cases.Some of the cases turned out to be hoaxes, but as often as not, he really encountered a ghost or a demon or some other kind of monster.These stories are entertaining if you enjoy old fashioned "ghost stories".

Ripping ghost hunter tales
"Ripping tales" is how someone else characterized Carnacki and that is absolutely how it struck me.Carnacki tackles hauntings with his mannnuscript, his electric pentacle, and his glass-legged table and door seals.What makes the stories even more exciting is that some of the ghosts are de-bunked and some are real demons.Depending on how much of this you can take, he does always attempt to attach science to the other-worldly beings.Some of the hauntings he doesn't resolve.I think that reading them all together is not the best way to approach the book.Hodgson also does that charming thing that Conan Doyle did in Sherlock Holmes--he refers to other cases and their startling outcomes--cases we never get to read.

I do think that several of the stories would do really well as movies or say, Twilight Zone episodes.With today's special effects, you could show Carnacki's devices and the complicated ways that the entities appear or sound.

SHOULD BE MADE INTO MOVIES
WHAT A GREAT CHARACTER ! CARNAKI THE GHOST FINDER IS RICHLY DESERVING OF RE-DISCOVERY . . I WAS ACTUALLY HESITANT TO ROAM THE HOUSE AT NIGHT, AFTER READING THESE "GEMS" . . ALL WERE EXCELLENT STORIES, "THE HOG" I FOUND ESPECIALLY UN-NERVING. THESE STORIES WOULD LEND THEMSELVES WELL TO BEING MADE INTO FILMS . . AN EXCELLENT READ ! GET IT. ... Read more

Product Description
Wordsworth's romantic critique of industrial life and society was backwards looking. His "Golden Age Ideal" of pastoral life and rural relationships falls within the scope of the English populism found among the middle ranks of small independent producers. His rural education and upbringing in the remote North of England explain his move away from radical and whig reform, in the years 1789 to 1832 as well as his relative demise as a poet. ... Read more

Product Description
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) is acknowledged as the greatest dramatist of all time. He excels in plot, poetry and wit, and his talent encompasses the great tragedies of "Hamlet", "King Lear", "Othello", and "Macbeth" as well as the moving history plays and the comedies such as "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "The Taming of the Shrew" and "As You Like It" with their magical combination of humour, ribaldry and tenderness. This volume is a reprint of the Shakespeare Head Press edition, and it presents all the plays in chronological order in which they were written. It also includes Shakespeare's Sonnets, as well as his longer poems "Venus and Adonis" and "The Rape of Lucrece". ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Tales of the bard
Shakespeare requires no introduction -- he is "the Bard," the most imposing playwright and storyteller in the English language. And "The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works" brings together every one of his 39 plays, ranging from harrowing tragedies to airy little puffs of comedy -- and even the lesser plays are still brilliant.

The plays basically are divided into comedies, histories and tragedies. The tragedies are pretty much... tragic, the comedies are not always funny but end semi-happily, and the histories... well, dramatizations of history.

And everybody has heard of the greats here -- the Scottish lord who murders his way to kingship, young lovers divided by a feud, a Moorish general who is driven mad with jealousy, an elderly king whose arrogance rips his life apart, a very cleaned-up version of Henry VIII's split from his first wife, the goofy Prince Hal and his growth into a great king. There are feuding fairies, bickering lovers, romantic tangles, Julius Caesar's demise, gender-bending, an exiled duke/magician on his island, and the infamous "pound of flesh" bargain.

But Shakespeare also wrote a bunch of lesser-known plays that often can't be so neatly categorized -- a rotten love affair during the siege of Troy, a Roman general attacking his own city, an Athenian gentleman embittered by humanity, Richard III's Machiavellian plot to become king, two sets of twins separated at birth, a corrupt judge obsessed with a lovely nun, Falstaff's doomed efforts to make money, and so on. Some of these ("Troilus and Cressida") aren't nearly as good as his "main" body of work, but they're still excellent.

For all Shakespeare's plays, it's best to read them AFTER you've seen a good performance. Otherwise, it's like reading a movie script to a movie you haven't seen -- easy to get lost, and the dramatic effects aren't easy to connect to. But if you've seen performances of any/all of Shakespeare's plays, then his vibrant stories and poetry leap off the page.

There are long eloquent speeches, puns, clever linguistic twists, and evocative language that soaks the play in atmosphere ("With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine/There sleeps Titania sometime of the night/Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight..."). In fact, his plays are diamond mines of quotations -- some are infamous ("To be or not to be") and some of which have floated into public knowledge without labels ("Cowards die many times before their deaths/The valiant never taste of death but once").

And while some of his plays are basically fluff, he manages to weave in moral questions, criticism and explorations of the human soul. And his characters range as far as his plots -- kings and princes, teenage lovers, proud but doomed men, bratty queens, the witty but combative Beatrice and Benedick, and even the puppet-master mage Prospero.

Shakespeare's "Complete Works" is a must-have for anyone who loves the English language -- his writing was unparalleled, and even his lesser plays are a cut above the rest.

Excellent!
The book arrived in a timely fashion (for my daughter's birthday) and was in the condition the seller described. ... Read more