Work record
Lyrical Ballads
William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor ColeridgeLyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1798)Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems, published anonymously in Bristol and London in the autumn of 1798, is often called the book that began English Romantic poetry.1798 · 18th Century · Poetry · English
Abstract
Background. Neighbours in the Quantocks, the two young poets planned a joint book partly to pay for a journey to Germany. Joseph Cottle of Bristol printed it without their names.
Content. A brief note calls the contents experiments in everyday speech. Coleridge's archaic sea ballad opens the book; three more pieces of his follow. Wordsworth then gives a feeble old huntsman, a child who counts her dead siblings, a shepherd losing his sheep, a cold-hearted farmer cursed by an old woman, and a mother searching for her son, before urging a bookish friend outdoors. A long meditation beside the Wye closes the volume.
Form. Simple quatrains and dialogue predominate; a few blank-verse poems interleave.
Themes. The poems honour the poor, children and the old, treat nature as a moral teacher, and test whether the supernatural and the commonplace can both be made poetic.
Reception. Reviewers in 1798 were divided; Southey dismissed the sea ballad as a Dutch attempt at German sublimity. Sales were modest but steady, and the expanded edition of 1800 with its manifesto-like Preface turned the book into a landmark that every later history of English poetry treats as a beginning.
For students. Read selections; compare with Biographia Literaria chapter XIV.
Key figures
- William Wordsworth: Author of most of the poems
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Author of the Mariner and three other poems
- Dorothy Wordsworth: Sister and companion addressed in Tintern Abbey
Summary
Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems, published anonymously in Bristol and London in the autumn of 1798, is often called the book that began English Romantic poetry. It contains twenty-three poems: four by Coleridge and the rest by Wordsworth. A short Advertisement explains that most of the poems are experiments, written to find out how far the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasure, and warns readers used to the gaudiness and inane phraseology of modern writers that they may find the poems strange. The volume opens with Coleridge's Rime of the Ancyent Marinere, in a deliberately old-fashioned spelling, followed by his Foster-Mother's Tale, The Nightingale, a conversation poem, and The Dungeon. Wordsworth's poems are mostly short ballads and lyrics about ordinary country people: Simon Lee, the old huntsman too weak to cut a root; We Are Seven, in which a little girl insists that her dead brother and sister still count among her family; Goody Blake and Harry Gill; The Thorn; The Last of the Flock; The Idiot Boy, about a mother's love for her disabled son; and The Female Vagrant, a story of war and poverty. Lines Written in Early Spring laments what man has made of man; Expostulation and Reply and The Tables Turned urge a friend to leave his books and let nature be his teacher. The book ends with Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, Wordsworth's great meditation on memory and nature. Reviewers were puzzled by its plainness, and the Mariner was thought obscure, but the volume sold, and a second edition in 1800 added Wordsworth's famous Preface. For students it shows two kinds of Romantic poetry side by side: Coleridge's supernatural made credible and Wordsworth's ordinary made new, just as Coleridge later described in Biographia Literaria.
Virtues in this work
Plot or Argument
- Advertisement
The poems are experiments in the language of ordinary conversation.
- The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere
Coleridge's supernatural ballad, in archaic spelling, opens the volume.
- Coleridge's other poems
The Foster-Mother's Tale, The Nightingale and The Dungeon.
- Rural ballads
Wordsworth's Simon Lee, We Are Seven, The Thorn, The Last of the Flock, Goody Blake and Harry Gill and The Idiot Boy.
- Poems of nature and teaching
Lines Written in Early Spring, Expostulation and Reply and The Tables Turned.
- Tintern Abbey
The closing blank-verse meditation on memory, nature and his sister.
Lessons
The dignity of ordinary people
Wordsworth writes about poor old men, a little girl, a shepherd and a mother with a disabled son. Ordinary lives are worthy of poetry.
- Why might Wordsworth choose such subjects?
- Which character moved you most and why?
- How does this compare with Burns?
Nature as teacher
The Tables Turned says one impulse from a vernal wood may teach more of man than all the sages. Students should test this claim.
- What does Wordsworth mean by we murder to dissect?
- Is he against books and learning?
- How would Proverbs answer him?
Two kinds of poetry
Coleridge makes the supernatural believable; Wordsworth makes the everyday wonderful.
- Which poems are Coleridge's and which Wordsworth's?
- How does Biographia Literaria chapter XIV explain the plan?
- Which approach do you prefer?
Context
Written in 1797-98 when Wordsworth lived at Alfoxden and Coleridge at Nether Stowey in Somerset. England was at war with revolutionary France, and both young poets had been sympathetic to the Revolution. The volume's plain style reacted against the ornate poetic diction of the eighteenth century.
Composition
Published by Joseph Cottle of Bristol and J. & A. Arch of London, anonymously, in 1798; a two-volume second edition (1800) added new poems and Wordsworth's Preface, and later editions followed in 1802 and 1805.
Reception
Early reviews were mixed; by the mid-nineteenth century it was seen as a turning point in English poetry.
Comparisons
- Poems and Songs of Robert Burns
Burns, whom Wordsworth admired, had already made poetry from rural speech.
- Biographia Literaria
Coleridge's later account of the volume's plan and his critique of Wordsworth's theory.
- Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
Gray's Elegy, the earlier poem on the dignity of the rural poor that Wordsworth's style partly reacted against.
Quotes
Frequently cited
“One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man; Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can.”
Frequently cited
“What man has made of man.”
“--We murder to dissect.”
“They were written chiefly with a view to ascertain how far the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasure.”
For Students
A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.
Reading Guide
Watch for
- The Advertisement's claim about the language of conversation.
- Archaic spelling in Coleridge's Marinere.
- Children and old people as subjects.
- The argument of Expostulation and Reply and The Tables Turned.
- Tintern Abbey as a closing poem.
Key terms and names
- Lyrical ballad
- A poem joining the song-like feeling of a lyric with the story of a ballad.
- Poetic diction
- Elevated, artificial language of eighteenth-century verse that the volume rejected.
- Advertisement
- The short prefatory note to the 1798 edition, later expanded into the 1800 Preface.
- Conversation poem
- Coleridge's informal blank-verse poems such as The Nightingale.
- Romanticism
- The movement valuing imagination, nature, feeling and the individual.
Seminar Questions
- Comprehension What does the Advertisement say the poems are?
- Comprehension Which poems in the volume are Coleridge's?
- Interpretation What does the little girl in We Are Seven believe, and why does the speaker argue with her?
- Interpretation What does Wordsworth mean by what man has made of man?
- Interpretation Why end the volume with Tintern Abbey?
- Big Question Can poetry about ordinary people be as great as poetry about heroes?
Faith Connections
- Psalm 104:24 (Scripture)
How manifold are your works, O Lord: compare the volume's reverence for nature.
- Proverbs 1:7 (Scripture)
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge: a check on the claim that nature alone teaches moral good.
- 1 Corinthians 15:55 (Scripture)
We Are Seven's child refuses to let death divide her family, a hint of resurrection faith.
Logic and Rhetoric
Central argument: Poetry can be made from the plain speech and ordinary lives of country people and from the supernatural made credible; nature can teach the heart; therefore the volume offers experiments that challenge readers to find poetry outside conventional diction.
Rhetorical device: dialogue. We Are Seven, Expostulation and Reply and Anecdote for Fathers are built on exchanges between speaker and listener.
Debate: Resolved: that nature can teach more of moral good than books.
Memory Work
One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man; Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can.
What man has made of man.
Writing Prompts
Essay: Choose one Coleridge poem and one Wordsworth poem and show how they carry out the plan described in Biographia Literaria chapter XIV.
Comparison with Biographia Literaria: Compare the Advertisement of 1798 with Coleridge's account in Biographia Literaria chapters XIV and XVII.
Creative Prompts
- Classroom
Assign each student one poem; each reports its speaker, subject and one striking line.
- Essay
Is The Tables Turned right that nature teaches more than books? Argue with care.
- Poetry
Write a ballad about an ordinary person you know, in plain language.
Further Reading
- Biographia Literaria, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Chapter XIV.
- Poems, in Two Volumes, William Wordsworth
Wordsworth's 1807 collection.
Verification notes
Full Gutenberg #9622 text of the 1798 first edition. Attribution of the poems between the two authors is standard. HS note: some ballads (The Thorn, The Female Vagrant) touch on infant death and hardship.
No verification flags recorded.