Poems, in Two Volumes

Published five years after William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s popular collectionLyrical Ballads, Wordsworth’s Poems, in Two Volumes shocked readers and drew scornful reviews.Poems was a revolutionary challenge to literary taste in revolution-weary times. The poems were perceived as inappropriately personal, “puerile,” and egotistical in the attention that the poet pays to “moods of [his own] mind.” The collection is now seen as containing some of the most enduring works of British Romantic poetry, and Wordsworth’s achievement in opening up new worlds of subject matter, emotion, and poetic expression is widely recognized.

Richard Matlak places the initial reaction to Poems in its historical context and explains the sea change in critical and popular opinion of these poems. The extensive historical documents place the poems in the context of Wordsworth’s life, contemporary politics, and the literary world of the early nineteenth century.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was a British poet best known for his lyric poetry and the autobiographical poemThe Prelude.

Richard Matlak is Professor of English and Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary and Special Studies at the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts.