Wordsworth and Coleridge

This collection of poems was first published anonymously in 1798 in the unfulfilled hope that it would make a little money. The two young authors were living close to one another in the Quantock Hills, in Somerset. Coleridge was 26, Wordsworth 28. Neither was yet famous, but today Lyrical Ballads is often seen as a founding text of the Romantic movement in Britain. It is a mixed bag of just over 20 pieces. Some resemble traditional ballads, while others are more descriptive and philosophical. Most of the content is Wordsworth’s but it also includes Coleridge’s ‘Rime of the Ancyent Marinere’. At the time, this attracted most critical attention but other items now well known include Wordsworth’s ‘Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey’ and versions of passages which would eventually form part of his long autobiographical poem The Prelude, published posthumously in 1850. Later editions (1802 and 1805) added a second volume of poems by Wordsworth, including ‘Michael’, a sonorous and moving account of a Lake District shepherd.

Wordsworth’s family were middle class but not wealthy. He grew up on the edge of the Lake District and was educated at a local grammar school and St John’s college, Cambridge. He did not follow a profession and lived frugally until he became successful as a poet in middle age. During his 1791 visit to France, Wordsworth fathered a child, though Britain’s war against the French kept him apart from his lover and their daughter until 1802. He supported her as far as he was able throughout his life but the tragic depictions of single mothers in several of the ballads may reflect the poet’s conscience.