—William Wordsworth Presentation: Lyrical Ballads, 1800 Volume II —“Old Man Travelling"

Biographical Info

—William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads.

—Born: April 7, 1770, Cockermouth

—Died: April 23, 1850, Ambleside

—Siblings: Dorothy Wordsworth

—Education: St John's College, Cambridge, Hawkshead Grammar School, University of Cambridge 

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Wordsworth and Coleridge

—1795 - Moves to Dorset with his sister Dorothy and meets Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the two become close friends.

—1797 - Friendship with Coleridge: Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy move closer to Coleridge. For a year, the two poets are in daily contact with one another, a period that proves to be a vital creative period for both of them. Wordsworth produces the poem "Tintern Abbey," and Coleridge writes "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." They collaborate on a groundbreaking collection of poetry.

—1798 – Wordsworth and Coleridge publish Lyrical Ballads, a collection of poems written in "language really used by men," free of the "gaudiness and inane phraseology of many modern writers."34 The book sparks the Romantic Age of English literature. In a preface to the second edition, Wordsworth warns the audience that they will either love or hate his new style of poetry.

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Images

Lyrical Ballads, 1800 Volume II

About the 1800 Edition 2nd vol of “Lyrical Ballads”

—In the second, two-volume edition of 1800, Wordsworth... expanded the Advertisement into a Preface which justified the new poetry not as experiments, but as exemplifying the principles of all good poetry... The Preface deserves its reputation as a revolutionary manifesto about the nature of poetry... [It serves] not only as a turning point in English criticism but also as a central document in modern culture" (Norton Anthology of English Literature).

—Contains all the poems in the first edition plus one additional poem in the first volume, and the first printing of the forty-one new poems in the second volume.

—Written in Grasmere, England along with the work written in Germany.

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Publication

—Published by Joseph Cottle and Biggs of Bristol firm.

—This time the authors could not oversee the printing process because they were in the Lake District.

—They hired chemist, Humphry Davy to assist with the editing and printing. However, he did little as he was unfamiliar with the poets’ intentions with regards to the printing inquiries and was ill much of the autumn of 1800.

—Wordsworth’s communication with the printer was through letters in which he requested that the arrangement of the poems be changed after the printing process had already begun and even tried to change the title of the volume. The most significant change was the withdrawal of Coleridge’s Christabel, and was substituted by Wordsworth Michael.

—Biggs and Cottle had canceled the first print run mentioning Christable in the “Preface” delaying the publication of the new edition.

—Delays meant that Longman could not distribute the volumes in time to take advantage of the 1800 Christmas trade, and Biggs and Cottle had to rush "Michael" through the press. Inevitably, they made a big mistake: fifteen lines of the poem, crucial to the plot, were omitted, and Wordsworth complained that the volume "is throughout miserably printed," while Coleridge fumed over "an infamous Blunder of the Printer" (Butler & Green 26-31, 123-125; Healey 6).

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1798 & 1800 Editions of “Old Man Travelling”

— In the 1798 edition, lines 17-20 are in quotation marks and spoken by the old man rather than paraphrased by the narrator.

—Title in the 1798 edition is Old Man Travelling; Animal Tranquility and Decay, A Sketch.

—In the 1800 edition, removes the quotation marks from lines 17-20 so that they are spoken by the narrator.

—Title in the 1800 edition was shortened to “Animal Tranquility and Decay: A Sketch”

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Reception

—The immediate effect on critics was not well received overall, but it became and remains a landmark, changing the course of English literature and poetry.

—Not a best seller but sold well overall and extended in four editions between 1798-1805.

—1798 edition was not a large run, about 200 copies were sold within two years.

—The reviews were mostly favorable and the poems were reprinted many a times in magazines and miscellanies.

—1800 edition included an addition of a preface, second volume and an additional 227 pages of newly composed verse (all by Wordsworth).

—George H. Healey, "bibliographically the most complex of all Wordsworth's books.”

Current auction price for “Lyrical Ballads”

—WORDSWORTH, William; and COLERIDGE, Samuel Taylor. Lyrical Ballads. London: T. N. Longman and O. Rees, 1800. Small octavo, contemporary full calf with original red and green morocco labels. Two volumes. Housed in custom half-leather box. $14,000.

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Sources

How Revolutionary Was Lyrical Ballads (1798-1800)?

ojs.ub.gu.se/ojs/index.php/njes/article/download/262/259

http://wordsworth.classicauthors.net/

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The "1798 Lyrical Ballads" and the Poetics of Late Eighteenth-Century Book Production Alan D. Boehm ELH , Vol. 63, No. 2 (Summer, 1996), pp. 453-487

Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30030228

http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/LB/preface.html#history

http://www.manhattanrarebooks.com/lyrical.htm

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