Brief Biography of William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth was born in a raised in the scenic English Lake District, a rural
paradise. His love for nature most likely came about as a result of this upbringing.
Wordsworth attended St. John’s College, Cambridge University and took his degree
without distinction. He spent a year in France (November 1791 to December 1792) after
completing his studies and became an ardent supporter of the French Revolution.
During this time, he fell in love with a Frenchwoman, Annette Vallon, and fathered a
daughter, Caroline, with her. Lack of money forced him to return to England and war
prevented him from rejoining his lover and child. This, combined with his disillusionment
with the Revolution, led Wordsworth to the verge of an emotional breakdown. At this
critical time, a friend died and left Wordsworth enough money to live by writing poetry. In
1795, he moved to Dorsetshire with his sister, Dorothy, befriended poet Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, and began his own poetic career at the age of 27. A short period of
collaboration between Wordsworth and Coleridge led to the publication of one of the
most important books of the time: Lyrical Ballads. Over the years, he grew increasingly
prosperous and famous, but settled into a religious and political conservatism that
disappointed readers, like William Hazlitt, who once thought of him as a promoter of
democratic change. By 1843, Wordsworth was poet laureate of Great Britain. He died in
1850 at the ripe age of eighty, and famed poet Alfred Lord Tennyson succeeded him as
poet laureate.

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Historical Context of Preface to the Lyrical Ballads

Wordsworth wrote the “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads” during a time where England was
experiencing profound urbanization, industrialization, and movement towards mass
media and mass culture. In the essay, Wordsworth expresses fear that these factors
can lead human minds to become dull, and thus advocates a poetic revolution. At the
same time, Wordsworth is careful to say that poetry, though passionate, should still be
the product of prior thought and acquired skill. His disappointment with the French
Revolution a decade prior to writing the “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads” turned him away
from the idea of thoughtless passion—emotions ought to be recollected and processed
“in tranquility” prior to being expressed.

Other Books Related to Preface to the Lyrical Ballads

“Preface to the Lyrical Ballads” is an introduction to Wordsworth’s poetry
collection, Lyrical Ballads, as well as a manifesto for the Romantic movement in
England. In the process of composing the essay, Wordsworth had frequent
conversations with Wordsworth’s close friend and fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
who also contributed a few poems of his own to Lyrical Ballads. Coleridge is most well-
known for his long poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, but also penned shorter
poems like “The Lime-Tree Bower My Prison.” Some of the ideas in “Preface to the
Lyrical Ballads” had antecedents in the late eighteenth century, but on the whole, the
preface is a rather revolutionary manifesto regarding about the essence of poetry. The
essay’s discussion of the valid language of poetry follows the lead of chapters 14 and
17 of Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria—both Romantic poets attack the lofty diction of
the Neoclassical poets. In his essay, Wordsworth also criticizes contemporary Gothic
novels and German melodramas. For him, such nonimaginative and sensational
literature threatens the acuity of the human mind. William Wordsworth’s sister, Dorothy,
was also a Romantic poet and kept journals (The Grasmere Journal and The Alfoxden
Journal) detailing her daily life, which often included spending time with Coleridge and
William in nature.

Key Facts about Preface to the Lyrical Ballads

 Full Title: Preface to the Lyrical Ballads

 When Written: 1800-1802

 Where Written: Grasmere, England

 When Published: 1800 (2nd ed.), 1802 (3rd ed.)

 Literary Period: Romantic

 Genre: Essay, Manifesto

 Antagonist: Late-Neoclassical writers

  Point of View: First Person

Extra Credit for Preface to the Lyrical Ballads

Decline with Age. Wordsworth wrote prolifically throughout his life, but it appeared that
after 1807, his poetic sensibility declined. Scholars have debated the reason for this
decline. Some say that most of his poetry is based on the remembrance and
reinterpretation of things he experienced as a youth, and memories of these
experiences hardly forms an inexhaustible source for poetic inspiration.

Summary
Analysis

Wordsworth explains that the first edition of Lyrical Ballads was published as a sort of
experiment to test the public reception of poems that use “the real language of men in a
state of vivid sensation.” The experiment was successful, better than Wordsworth was
expecting, and many were pleased with the poems.
Wordsworth initially considered his poems to be an experiment, suggesting that he
wasn’t all that confident that the public would receive them warmly. It would appear that
as the first edition of the Lyrical Ballads were well-received, Wordsworth should feel at
ease. However, a certain degree of uneasiness remains—Wordsworth still feels the
need to explain his experimental poetry in a preface.
ACTIVE THEMES

Wordsworth acknowledges that his friend (Samuel Taylor Coleridge) supplied several
poems in the collection, including Rime of the Ancient Mariner. He then relates that he
and his friends wish to start a new type of poetry, poetry of the sort seen in Lyrical
Ballads. Wordsworth notes that he was initially unwilling to write the preface as some
sort of systemic defense of this new genre, because he doesn’t want to reason anyone
into liking these poems. He also says the motives behind starting this new genre of
poetry are too complex to fully articulate in so few words. Still, he has decided to furnish
a preface: his poems are so different from the poems of his age that they require at
least a brief explanation as to their conception.
Wordsworth was not alone in his endeavor to start a new type of poetry. From this,
readers can gather that multiple poets during Wordsworth’s era were dissatisfied with
the trends of contemporary poetry. Wordsworth’s disclaimer—that his reasons for
starting a new genre of poetry cannot be captured in the space of a preface—implies
that the faults of late-Neoclassical poetry are also complicated. From this, readers can
gather that Wordsworth lived in an era when things were growing increasingly complex
with the onset of modernity.
ACTIVE THEMES

RELATED QUOTES WITH EXPLANATIONS

Wordsworth claims that just as authors have a right to use certain ideas and
techniques, they also have a right to exclude other ideas and techniques. In every age,
different styles of poetry arise, and people expect different things from poetry. He goes
on to cite many great yet different poets of old, from Catullus Terence to Alexander
Pope. Wordsworth wants to use the preface to explain why he writes poetry the way he
does, so that people don’t see his nonconformity as laziness.
In drawing on many great yet disparate poets of old, Wordsworth implies that at different
times, different styles of poetry were considered great. In other words, each generation
lives in a different situation and thus naturally prefers a different style of poetry that
somehow aligns with or responds to the times. Thus, Wordsworth writes differently from
his contemporaries not because he is lazy, but because he senses that the changing
times need a new style of poetry to match.
 Romanticism vs. Neoclassicism
Theme Analysis

The “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads” is, at its core, a manifesto of the Romantic
movement. Wordsworth uses this essay to declare the tenets of Romantic poetry,
which has distinctly different preoccupations from the Neoclassical poetry of the
preceding period. The Neoclassical poets emphasized intellectualism over emotion,
society, didacticism, formality, and stylistic rigidity. The last stage of Neoclassicism,
before the onset of Romanticism, is known as the Age of Johnson. In this last stage,
writers attempted to break from the classical tradition through gestures like
incorporating nature and melancholy, but were, in Wordsworth’s eyes, unsuccessful.
Wordsworth proposes something more revolutionary in his “Preface to the Lyrical
Ballads”: emotion and imagination over intellectualism, nature over society, simple
forms of expression, and the stylistic liberty of the poet. Through his “Preface to the
Lyrical Ballads,” Wordsworth argues that it’s time for a new kind of poetry—one that can
revive humankind to be emotionally alive and morally sensitive—which he hopes to
catalyze with his own ballads.

Wordsworth sees great harm in the poetry of the Age of Johnson. The poets of this age
have attempted to break from Neoclassicism, but their poetry displays an unforgivable
insensitivity and sensationalism. Wordsworth notes that there appears to be “a craving
for extraordinary incident” among the general public for his time, and “the literature and
theatrical exhibitions of the country have conformed themselves” to this taste: “The
invaluable works of our elder writers […] are driven into neglect by frantic novels, sickly
and stupid German tragedies, and deluges of idle and extravagant stories in verse.”
Writers from the Age of Johnson have attempted to incorporate certain characteristics of
Romanticism but have created works that are overwrought and lacking in insight. From
Wordsworth’s critique of these writers, readers of the “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads”
can infer that Wordsworth believes writers should be sensitive to emotions but should
not dramatize these emotions so that they become artificial.

Nevertheless, the decline of literature has not led Wordsworth to be hopeless. The poet
declares, “I should be oppressed with no dishonorable melancholy, had I not a deep
impression of certain inherent and indestructible qualities of the human mind, and
likewise of certain powers in the great and permanent objects that act upon it which are
equally inherent and indestructible.” In other words, Wordsworth believes that the
decline from the Age of Johnson can be counteracted by “certain powers” that can
revive the human mind—namely, the powers of Romanticism. Wordsworth wishes to
guide his readers to the “fluxes and refluxes of the mind when agitated by the great and
simple affections of our nature,” to guide his readers back to their natural sensitivity.

In the introductory paragraphs of the “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads,” Wordsworth

declares that by publishing the Lyrical Ballads four years ago in 1798, he was
conducting an experiment to see if people would accept a new class of poetry. Since
these poems were well-received, Wordsworth decided to write the “Preface to the
Lyrical Ballads” to give readers insight into why he wrote such experimental poems. In
these poems, Wordsworth has attempted to “[fit] to metrical arrangement a selection of
the real language of men in a state of vivid sensation.” By writing these poems,
Wordsworth intends not only to impart pleasure, but also to produce a class of poetry
“well adapted to interest mankind permanently, and not unimportant in the multiplicity,
and in the quality of its moral relations.” From this, readers can see that Wordsworth
had two main goals in mind: 1) to create poems that appeal not only to well-educated
readers but also to the “multiplicity,” or general public, and 2) to have these poems be
relevant to humanity’s “moral relations,” inspiring readers to have humane conduct.
Aware that his poems are “so materially different from those upon which general
approbation is at present bestowed”—in other words, the poetry that is popular at the
time of his writing—Wordsworth emphasizes that his poetic digression from
Neoclassicism is not the product “of an indolence which prevents him from
endeavouring to ascertain what is his duty.” Instead, Wordsworth wants to exclude
“certain classes of ideas and expressions” in Neoclassical poetry that, to him, are
demonstrate an artificial “gaudiness and inane phraseology.” Wordsworth emphasizes
that his decision to write in a simpler, less-rigid style than the Neoclassicists does not
arise from laziness, but from dislike for their lofty phrases. Wordsworth finds the
Neoclassical style to be too flashy and rather senseless.

Neoclassicism, in its dedication to intellectualism and other lofty ideas, seems heartless
to Wordsworth. Poets in the Age of Johnson who attempted to diverge from earlier
classes of Neoclassicism failed to produce better literature and instead fell into the trap
of sensationalism. Romanticism is something wholly revolutionary, and, according to
Wordsworth, has the potential to revive the public back to sensitivity.

Ordinary Life and Everyday Language

Theme Analysis

Throughout his “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads,” Wordsworth emphasizes the importance of

depicting ordinary life using everyday language in a poem. According to Wordsworth, using

ordinary life as subject matter allows the poet to better explore human nature and reveal truth.

This simple, prose-like language not only corresponds well with ordinary life—it’s closer to the

way that normal, everyday people speak—but also is more universally intelligible: its simplicity

and honesty create a sense of permanence, making it accessible for readers across time and

place.

In order to show why his method of tackling ordinary subjects through ordinary language
is so important and impactful, Wordsworth reveals the pitfalls of not using that
approach. He suggests that poets who don’t rely on ordinary language “separate
themselves from the sympathies of men.” To Wordsworth, a poet must be close to their
reader and pull that reader in—a poet who tries to fluff up his or her poem with jargon or
lofty language alienates the reader and has trouble connecting to their lived experience.
In addition, veering away from ordinary life and plain language means that poems may
be less enduring. Wordsworth argues that many poets “indulge in arbitrary and
capricious habits of expression in order to furnish food for fickle tastes and fickle
appetites of their own creation.” While poems centering around everyday life and
expressed through simple language will live on, poems that don’t do those things will
essentially only have fifteen minutes of fame. Wordsworth also points out that he’s
“abstained from the use of many expressions, in themselves proper and beautiful, but
which have been foolishly repeated by bad Poets till such feelings of disgust are
connected with them as it is scarcely possible by any art of association to overpower.”
Here, Wordsworth is explaining how certain words and phrases, though they may sound
beautiful, can grow stale and trite over the years—so much so, that even the best poet
can’t “overpower” the sour, spoiled flavor those words and phrases have taken on

Wordsworth argues that what makes common scenes from ordinary life so impactful in
poetry is that they speak clearly to human nature and are also enduring. Wordsworth
makes it clear that his “principal object” is “to choose incidents and situations from
common life […] and, at the same time, to throw over them a certain colouring of
imagination […] and above all, to make these incidents and situations interesting by
tracing in them […] the primary laws of our nature.” Wordsworth wishes to depict
ordinary things—albeit in an interesting way through using his imagination—so that his
readers may better understand human nature. Along these lines, Wordsworth claims
that “low and rustic life was generally chosen, because in that condition, the essential
passions of the heart find a better soil in which they can attain their maturity, are less
under restraint, and speak a plainer and more emphatic language.” Wordsworth
believes that there is a certain degree of universality to rural life: things are “more easily
comprehended” because they are “more durable.” In other words, rural life is the most
easily relatable and timeless.

Wordsworth also emphasizes that he wants to use “a selection of language really used
by men”—that is, language that mirrors the way everyday people (the peasantry) talk as
they go about their lives—because of its purity and universality. For Wordsworth,
society has corrupted language. Instead of buying into the lofty language and rigid
poetic forms that society deems proper, Wordsworth chooses to use the stripped-down,
ordinary language of a commoner. He explains that common people speak more
truthfully because they aren’t swayed by “social vanity,” and it is this unadorned truth—
the “simple and unelaborated expressions” of everyday people—that Wordsworth is
after. Furthermore, Wordsworth claims that “such a language, arising out of repeated
experience and regular feelings, is a more permanent, and a far more philosophical
language, than that which is frequently substituted for it by Poets.” Not only is everyday
language truer, it’s also more enduring. To Wordsworth, everyday language means that
it’s stripped bare of the poetic devices that many believe to be part and parcel to poetry.
He writes: “Except in a very few instances the Reader will find no personifications of
abstract ideas.” Although personification has its place in certain poems, Wordsworth
doesn’t rely on the device because his goal is “to imitate, and, as far as possible, to
adopt the very language of men, and I do not find that such personifications make any
regular or natural part of that language.” Along the same lines, Wordsworth also avoids
excessively poetic diction. He explains, “I have taken as much pains to avoid it as
others ordinarily take to produce it; this I have done […] to bring my language near to
the language of men.” That Wordsworth has tried just as hard to filter out that which
other poets try so hard to infuse into their poems emphasizes just how serious
Wordsworth is about reflecting everyday life with the language to match.

Towards the middle of his “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads,” Wordsworth writes, “I wish to
keep my Reader in the company of flesh and blood, persuaded that by so doing I shall
interest him.” While Wordsworth means that readers won’t find many instances of
personification or lofty, abstract ideas floating around in the ensuing ballads, his
statement here also speaks to his overarching goal: to write in plain, unadorned
language about everyday people and things—“flesh and blood”—in order to convey the
human experience in a way that is true and enduring.

Related Themes

Poetry and Emotions

Theme Analysis

Emotions are of utmost importance to Wordsworth when it comes to poetry. “For all
good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” he writes in his “Preface
to the Lyrical Ballads.” However, Wordsworth is careful to point out that depicting
emotion requires prior thought and acquired skill on the part of the poet. The poet
should be able to successfully observe and depict the thoughts and feelings that people
have when they are in “a state of excitement,” meaning the stimulation people
experience in a given situation. In this way, when a poet successfully composes a
poem, that poem should have a noticeable effect on its reader, as it is relatable. In the
“Preface to the Lyrical Ballads,” Wordsworth argues that in order to compose a
successful and impactful poem, the poet must immerse themselves in a sort of process
for poetic creation, which includes observing the subject matter, recollecting his or her
emotions, contemplating those emotions, reviving those emotions in a composition, and,
finally, enjoying the pleasure that his or her poetry creates.

For Wordsworth, a worthy poet must be able to convey his or her own emotional
sensibility to the reader. Wordsworth claims that emotions and thoughts are strongly
intertwined: “For our continued influxes of feeling are modified and directed by our
thoughts, which are indeed the representatives of all our past feeling.” The poet must be
able to understand this connection, as someone who often thinks of the relationship
between thoughts and feelings will become more emotionally sensitive and aware.
Then, when one such sensitive person communicates his or her thoughts, the listener,
“if he be in a healthful state of association, must necessarily be in some degree
enlightened, and his affections ameliorated.” In other words, when a poet successfully
communicates their emotions, readers will be vicariously enlightened. Because the poet
is tasked with successfully conveying that “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”
to his or her readers, the poet must engage in a process that allows him or her to find
the right words to express himself or herself. But first, the poet must be uncommonly
aware of emotions: the poet needs to have “a greater knowledge of human nature, and
a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind.” Such
a sensibility allows the poet to “slip into an entire delusion, and even confound and
identify his own feelings with [those of the people he describes].” In this way, a poet
must be a sharp observer and must be able to contemplate and process the emotions
that came with his or her observations.

The Wordsworthian poet ought to recollect their emotions “in tranquility" so that what he
or she composes will not be momentary, but timeless. Wordsworth claims that “the poet
is chiefly distinguished from other men by a greater promptness to think and feel without
immediate external excitement, and a greater power in expressing such thoughts and
feelings as are produced in him in that manner.” The purpose of this is so that the poet
can better communicate their thoughts and feelings to others: “in order to excite rational
sympathy, he must express himself as other men express themselves.” The
Wordsworthian process for poetic creation involves not just contemplating emotions “in
tranquility,” but contemplating those emotions until “by a species of reaction the
tranquility gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the
subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the
mind.” In other words, the poet should calmly process the emotions he or she initially
experienced without distraction, until he or she feels in touch with those emotions again.
Then, the poet may begin composing. This process allows the poet to create a distance
between the initial emotion and the reader, in a way that tempers “the painful feeling
which will always be found intermingled with powerful descriptions of the deeper
passions,” and thus leads to greater pleasure. The process for poetic creation has so
refined the poet’s composition, Wordsworth adds, that it will carry an enduring rather
than momentary pleasure for its readers.

For Wordsworth, the essence of poetry comes in the form of a profound rendering of
emotions, which helps the reader understand themselves better. As Wordsworth writes
in his “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads,” the important thing is “that the feeling therein
developed [in a poem] gives importance to the action and situation and not the action
and situation to the feeling”—poetry, in Wordsworth’s eyes, hinges on emotion even
more so than the actual event or situation it’s describing.

Poetry, Nature, and Humanity

Theme Analysis

At the beginning of the 19th century, when Wordsworth was writing, England was
moving towards industry and urbanity. Wordsworth believed that this sort of fast-paced,
crowded lifestyle caused people’s minds to grow numb. Wordsworth wrote not for
himself, but for the sake of his contemporaries, whose minds he believed were dull. He
felt the need to use the subject of nature in his poetry in order to keep his readers
emotionally alive and morally sensitive. He saw nature as the solution to the harms of
urban life, and, thus, chose to center his Lyrical Ballads around experiences in nature.
In his “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads,” Wordsworth highlights that his nature-centered
poems have a “worthy purpose” in their potential to reverse the effects of urban life and
revive dull minds: his poetry allows people to vicariously experience the profound joys of
nature and be revived. In response to urbanization, he felt the need to create poetry that
would be “well adapted to interest mankind permanently, and likewise important in the
multiplicity and quality of its moral relations”—in other words, Wordsworth argues that
his poetry can help keep humans by bringing them back to nature.

In his “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads,” Wordsworth highlights how his nature-centered
poetry has the power to turn people away from urbanity and industrialization, which he
believes dull people’s minds. At the time of Wordsworth’s writing, the Industrial
Revolution had recently transformed Britain: people migrated to the city and factories
began to appear. Furthermore, Europe was in political upheaval and people were falling
for propagandic messages. Wordsworth was bitterly disappointed by the result of the
French Revolution and did not want England to follow after France. In general,
Wordsworth disliked this trend towards urbanity, industry, mass media, and mass
culture: the numbing of the mind arises as the result of “great national events which are
daily taking place, and the increasing accumulation of men in cities, where the
uniformity of their occupations produces a craving for extraordinary incident, which the
rapid communication of information hourly gratifies.” In Wordsworth’s eyes, these
aspects of society have led people to develop bad taste—they craved the instant
gratification and revolution rather than profound joy and peace. This bad taste can be
seen in his disdainful reference to contemporary Gothic novels and German
melodramas: “The invaluable works of our elder writers […] are driven into neglect by
frantic novels, sickly and stupid German tragedies, and deluges of idle and extravagant
stories in verse.” Wordsworth is eager to show that “the human mind is capable of being
excited without the application of gross and violent stimulants” by creating a new class
of more profound, natural literary enjoyment.

Wordsworth’s solution to mind-dulling urbanization is to bring people back to nature

through poetry: nature-centered poetry allows people to vicariously experience the
simple, unadulterated joys of the countryside. In his “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads,”
Wordsworth explains that the time is ripe for his ballads, which will orient readers toward
nature. He writes: “It has therefore appeared to me that to endeavor to produce or
enlarge this capability is one of the best services in which, at any period, a Writer can
be engaged; but this service, excellent at all times, is especially so at the present day.”
In other words, Wordsworth thinks that the curative powers of nature-centered poetry
are timeless and applicable to any generation but are especially potent for his age.
The Lyrical Ballads represents a “species of poetry […] which is genuine poetry,” that
“give[s] other enjoyments, of a purer, more lasting, and more exquisite nature.” For
Wordsworth, nature-centered literature can be the antidote for depravity because such
literature allows people who live in depraved societies to vicariously travel to a place of
nature and tranquility and experience the purity of the “rustic” human experience. The
“purer, more lasting, and more exquisite” joy that his nature-centered poetry brings
forms a stark contrast to the “gross and violent” stimulation that urban life and
sensational literature bring. Indeed, Wordsworth views nature to be the one of the most
important subjects with which a poet can engage. He writes that “there is still left open
to me what confessedly constitutes the most valuable object of all writing whether in
prose or verse, […] the entire world of nature.” For the poet, nature “[supplies] endless
combinations of form and imagery”—nature is both a valuable topic and a source of
abundant inspiration. The pleasure of urban life and sensational literature is temporary
and quickly depleted, leading people to seek stimulants that are still more “gross and
violent”; the joy of nature, by contrast, is lasting and bountiful.

For Wordsworth, urban life and sensational literature has brought on the moral decline
of humanity, and the best way to counter this is to bring people back to nature using
Romantic poetry. In his “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads,” Wordsworth preps his reader to
vicariously experience a stroll through the countryside, a quiet moment perched atop a
cliff, or a sunset by the sea, all by reading one of Wordsworth’s ballads in the pages
ahead. These nature-centered poems, Wordsworth argues, will not only revive readers
and refresh their tired minds, but will also serve as a lasting source of joy.
Preface To Lyrical Ballads Summary

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OVERVIEW
Preface to Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth begins with a discussion of the
collection of poems, written mostly by Wordsworth with contributions by S.T. Coleridge.
Originally published in 1798, in 1800, Wordsworth added an earlier version of
the Preface, which he extended two years later. Because he felt his poems were of a new
theme and style, Wordsworth felt they needed an introduction. Some scholars say that
Coleridge wanted to write the preface, but never got around to it, so the work fell to
Wordsworth instead. As the majority of the poems in the collection are by Wordsworth,
this was probably a more appropriate choice, though there is suggestion in some of
Coleridge’s later writings that the two disagreed about what the Preface should say. In
the Preface, Wordsworth writes that the purpose of the collection was to write poems that
dealt with things that happen in everyday life. Most importantly, Wordsworth considered
each poem in the collection to be an experiment in language usage, or diction. He wanted
to find out if conversational language could be used effectively in poetry.

What, then, is poetry? Wordsworth sets out to define this particular form of art. In
the Preface to Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth outlines his definition of the nature and
function of poetry—as well as identifying the qualities that make someone a true poet.
For Wordsworth, poetry must reflect spontaneity and an “overflow of powerful feelings.”
Passion is key, as are mood and temperament. Although poetry must emerge from
spontaneity, it must not be written spontaneously. Rather, Wordsworth asserts that a
poem should be the result of long and deep reflection. He also cautions against being too
concerned with the poetic rules of Classicism.

Next, Wordsworth breaks down the poet’s process into four stages. The first is
observation. A person, object, or situation must stimulate powerful emotions in the
Romantic poet, and those observations must be noted. Recollection follows, which is the
stage when the poet contemplates those observations. For this, tranquility is a must.
Memories may surface that are days old or older, and the poet should contemplate those
memories to explore how the emotions they provoke relate to past experiences. The third
stage is filtering, when the poet clears the mind of all non-essential elements. The result of
this is that the poet’s personal experience becomes relevant to a wider audience. It’s not
until the fourth and final stage that the poet should begin to compose. The goal is to
express emotions in a way that the reader will understand, and can therefore
contemplate.

Wordsworth’s next topic is imagination. He begins by discussing how the neo-classicists

defined imagination. They said that the mind was passive, and recorded sensations.
Imagination, therefore, is a function of memory combined with the ability to associate
those sensations with other things that may or may not exist. He provides the example of
mythical creatures, which elicit, in literature, real sensations. For Romantics like
Wordsworth, imagination is much more creative. Rather than assigning recorded
sensations to other objects, the imagination has the power to create a new reality, and to
see beyond the material world surrounding the poet. As for what to write about,
Wordsworth states that poetry can capture any and every subject that is of interest to the
mind. What matters is not whether a subject is poetic, but rather, whether the poet can
add meaning to a subject and therefore make it poetic. Suddenly, themes from common
life can be poetic and worthy of the contemplation Wordsworth requires of the poet. The
reason this works, according to his argument, is that those who live a rustic lifestyle are
closer to nature—and therefore farther away from vanity bred by artifice.

Next, Wordsworth dives deeper into the function of poetry. Unlike the classicists, who
value art for the sake of art—the idea that art should be produced regardless of any
moral values or concerns--Wordsworth and the Romantics believe in art for the sake of
life. That is, Wordsworth sees the function of poetry as ennobling the reader through the
teaching of moral and philosophical values and ideals.

Finally, Wordsworth discusses in greater depth the diction of poetry. Diction is basically
the use of language, but more specifically, it’s the choice of words, phrases, sentence
structures, and even figurative language. While diction is important in all of literature,
Wordsworth places particular importance on its role in poetry because it is the poet’s
medium. Whereas prose also has characters, setting, and plot to convey a message, the
poet's choice of language, or diction, is the sole means of expression in poetry. Despite
this, Wordsworth argues that the diction of poetry and prose is the same, and criticizes
the neo-classicists for their “artificial” and “unnatural” language. Passion should drive
diction, not ornament, dignity or meter. He wants poetry to center on rustic, humble
situations using rustic, humble language. According to Wordsworth, that is the real
source of poetic truth and beauty.

Preface to the Lyrical Ballads | Main Ideas

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Poetry as the Language of Common People

The Preface to Lyrical Ballads presents Wordsworth's explanation for the new type of poetry he published in
1798. He continued to revise the Preface in the hope of gaining a larger reading audience and further
recognition by other writers. He rejects previous conventional approaches to literature as emotionally barren,
overlooking the connection he values between the thoughts and language of common people and the poet's
ability to transmit the experience at the same accessible level. He speaks of poetry as existing from the poet as
one person to other persons, with minimal or no intermediary needed. He recognizes some refinement of
anything considered vulgar or offensive would need revising, but otherwise no real barriers need exist. As a
Romantic, Wordsworth values the humble, rustic ways of countryfolk, people who he believes have directly
experienced the truths of nature. Their experiences can be transmitted in poetry that includes the same honesty
and directness that he finds in homogenous rural settings. Poems he creates spring from the overflow of
genuine feelings. These lead to reflection and simple wisdom and then are restated in ordinary language to
recreate the original emotion.
The Preface rejects reliance on standards from the Classical or Enlightenment eras—Pope and Johnson among
the British poets he names—because they overlook the lives of common people who speak humble and
unadorned language.

Prose and Poetry

Devoting much attention to emphasizing the close connection of poetry with prose, Wordsworth shows little
patience for efforts in past eras to perfect standards for either poetry or prose at the expense of the other. For
him, both share the same purpose: to speak plainly and honestly in language reflecting the lives of living
people and not close themselves off to the other form. He does not believe in a separation of poetry and prose
as two opposed approaches but instead states repeatedly they come from the same origins and spirit and should
be accessible at equal levels.

Wordsworth places little value on the factual or scientific in literature. He is far more interested in the
emotions arising from an immediate experience that is later reflected upon, assimilated, and understood. He
can see the significance of scientific inquiry and knowledge, but for speaking the truths of the lives of his
contemporaries, he keeps a distance between instinctive literature and applied scientific literature. For
Wordsworth, this type of literature does not unite the scientist with ordinary people on a daily basis, but
instead keeps him isolated in a world of facts. Writing as he was in the first years of the 1800s, he could not
anticipate the enormous role scientific research and experimentation has assumed since then. The Preface
ushers in a new world of literary sensibility, and is focused ahead of that changing world. However,
scientifically, it seems naïve.

Role of the Poet

At the heart of the Preface, Wordsworth gives extended treatment to the role of a poet, according to the views
he has expressed on language and content. The poet is a person of the common people, attuned to them and
sensitive to their experiences, and at the same time the poet is someone in a special position. Wordsworth
explains, "The poet, singing a song in which all human beings join with him, rejoices in the presence of truth
as our visible friend and hourly companion." The poet is the "rock of defense for human nature; an upholder
and a preserver, carrying everywhere with him relations and love." Wordsworth adds, "The poet binds together
by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society ... and over all time."

As the new scientists of Wordsworth's time forged ahead in chemistry and botany, so the poet represents "the
first and last of all knowledge ... as immortal as the heart of man ... The poet will lend his divine spirit to aid
the transfiguration" into knowledge. But for Wordsworth and others he hoped to inspire, the role of art stands
far apart from applied science of any kind. The poet remains a special person, an individual who can take the
ordinary experiences of common people and articulate those experiences coherently into felt passions and
controlled emotions that touch on moral truth and rightness.
Preface to the Lyrical Ballads | Context
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Wordsworth and Other Writers

Wordsworth was very conscious of many figures in the history of English literature. In his own education, he
had read the great writers, appreciating some and finding others not to his taste or to his desire to write in a
new form and style. The previous century, up to around the time of Wordsworth's birth in 1770, had produced
the famous Augustan Age of poets and essayists, such as Alexander Pope (1688–1744). These writers relied on
classical models; often used elegant but unnatural diction (word choice) and quotations from Latin; and aimed
for sophistication, wit, and urbanity, or refined manners. They exalted reason as capable of controlling the
baser instincts associated with nature, which the Augustans distrusted as wild and unshaped by society. With
little interest in the lives of ordinary people, Augustans frequently portrayed high society and nobility in
carefully crafted and often satiric works.
As the Augustan Age waned, Samuel Johnson (1709–84) and others of his time rejected neoclassicism and
instead relied heavily on reason and common sense to control excesses of imagination and sentiment.
Language was used deliberately to instruct, but writers still took little interest in common people or themes.
However, poets such as Thomas Gray (1716–71), William Blake (1757–1827), and Robert Burns (1759–96)
are sometimes called proto-Romantics, or those in the early stages of Romantic thought. In their work they
dispensed with formulaic classical models, such as rhyming couplets, in favor of blank, or unrhyming, verse.
Poetry became more immediate and accessible in plainer speech and vocabulary, calling objects what they
really were. And in poems like "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" and "Is There for Honest Poverty,"
everyday people emerged as serious poetic subjects.

Looking back at his predecessors, Wordsworth wanted to build on these innovations and, at the same time,
accomplish something more radical, even revolutionary for the aesthetics of his time. In the Preface he does
not hesitate to give examples of the type of poetry he dislikes as insufficiently down to earth. Seeking to unify
simplicity in life and in art, Wordsworth believed he could write to bring about this realization. Although he
knew Samuel Johnson's work was greatly esteemed, he contrasted some of Johnson's lines with those from a
popular folk ballad and found Johnson's lines "neither interesting ... nor [leading] to anything interesting; the
images neither originate in that sane state of feeling which arises out of thought, nor can excite thought or
feeling in the Reader." This analysis became the standard by which Wordsworth was to judge the craft of the
poet he hoped to be in his own time.

Rise of Romanticism
Wordsworth is one of the most important Romantic writers, and the Preface to his Lyrical Ballads is
considered a manifesto for understanding Romanticism. The Romantic movement is generally dated from late
in the 18th century through the first decades of the 19th. Critics have noted 1798 and the appearance of
Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads in that year as the actual starting point of the movement. The
Preface Wordsworth wrote to explain those poems plays a large role in clarifying the aims of Romanticism as a
way of thought and as a watershed moment in European and American culture.
Romanticism influenced all the arts, not only literature. Most Romantic writers worked independently, but
others, like Wordsworth and Coleridge, collaborated, despite differing views. They did not refer to themselves
as Romantics, for the term came into popular use much later with critics and anthologizers. Later in the 19th
century, other movements, such as realism and naturalism, arose under the influence of science and changing
conditions in urban and rural life. Romanticism then came to be associated with an earlier outpouring of
emotions and new ways of looking at life that were superseded by the course of history.

Romantic writers shared certain common beliefs, among them a strong bond with nature. This bond manifested
itself in a desire to live in rural settings and a preference for land work over factory production despite the
prevailing industrial development. In addition, they believed in the power of literature to bring about social
change and to explore new horizons and passions, not conforming to old or "accepted" wisdom. In their
preference for individual consciousness over the collective expressions of ideas, Romantic writers relied on the
imagination to form a new vision of the world. Finally, a belief in the purity and simplicity of childhood was
the lens for understanding in the Romantic worldview.

Critics have noted that in the past, for the most part, art reflected reality and followed certain principles of the
artist. However, in Wordsworth's poetry, for the first time, art tended to illuminate the real from within by
revealing the soul and nature of things rather than the external reality itself. In a simplified sense, everything is
feeling, not fact, as in the episode in Wordsworth's Prelude in which the young boy fears being pursued by a
vengeful mountain after taking a boat. The mountain is capable of neither feeling nor motion, but to the
frightened child it is full of meaning. Ordinary people may experience similar feelings, which a poet may
emulate. To the Romantics, this kind of experience leads to poetry, as Wordsworth explains in the Preface.

Coleridge and the Preface

Although his poems often focus on the pleasures of solitude, Wordsworth was influenced all his life by other
people, places, and events. The closest collaboration came from poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whom he met
in 1795 and with whom he began an important literary partnership. Together they conceived the idea of
the Lyrical Ballads, which they published anonymously in two editions, the first in 1798. The subsequent 1800
edition was published with only Wordsworth's name. Although they had a loose agreement to work equally on
the ballads, Wordsworth—steady, industrious, and organized—wrote much more than the unstable, opium-
addicted Coleridge. For a time the Wordsworth and Coleridge families lived near each other and traveled
together, but the two men became estranged in 1810 after Coleridge received reports of critical remarks
Wordsworth had made about him. Their work together ended, and Coleridge died in 1834.
Critics often have studied Coleridge's influence on Wordsworth—rather than the reverse. When Wordsworth
speaks in the Preface about "friends" advising him to write an explanation for his new poetry and strong beliefs
he wished to spread, "friends" is widely assumed to be Coleridge. Wordsworth sometimes claimed much of the
abstract theory behind the Preface was not his and originally responded to his friend's urging by stating he
"never cared a straw about the theory—and the Preface was written at the request of Coleridge out of sheer
good nature."

Coleridge had strong opinions about what his friend had written and disagreed with many of the changes
Wordsworth made in later versions. Coleridge claimed the Preface placed too much emphasis on pure
association with nature and not on poetic creativity. He did not fully agree with Wordsworth's take on the
almost identical natures of poetry and prose and the essence of "poetic diction." Because the two men's works
are so different—and given their on-again, off-again friendship—it is unlikely Coleridge would have fully
aligned himself with his friend's statements about poetry. He found Wordsworth exaggerated in some of his
theoretical ideas, and these judgments may have contributed to the decline of Wordsworth's reputation in the
last decades of his long life.

Preface to the Lyrical Ballads | Summary

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Summary
The Preface to Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge appeared after the first publication of the poems
and then in numerous revised forms until the end of Wordsworth's career. It remains the clearest statement of
Romantic principles as it lays out the purpose and practice of writing poetry and its close relation to prose. It
also explains the profession, or craft, of the "poet" and the role of poetry in giving a voice to contemporary and
simplified ways of living that stay close to the truths of nature. For Wordsworth, as for all the Romantic
writers, one discovered these primary laws of nature through experiences in the natural world—experiences
that, when combined with emotion, produced poetry.
Importance of Subject Matter
Wordsworth emphasizes why and how he chooses the subjects for his poems. He separates his work from that
of past ages and literary figures, showing they have been too "literary" by emphasizing formal or classical
models of artificial conventions. Rather than the recording of actual observations or events, Wordsworth
believes emotional truths and fidelity to nature are the keys to providing ordinary readers with insights into
their own conditions of life. He favors a "humble and rustic" rural existence (yet without narrating anything
unsettling or violent) to urban life because it seems simpler and more natural. Wordsworth also favors a more
unified, common population that shares similar experiences. In cities like rapidly expanding London, the
permanence of natural truths seems absent. The short-lived values of shifting populations give no connection
to the past or the promise of future tranquility for the common people, whose experiences can form the basis
for poetry as well as prose. Wordsworth sought to make ordinary experiences seem more extraordinary and
enduring. As nature reveals permanence and unchanging truths, the new literature Wordsworth proposes would
share the simplicity, and depth, of people's lives.

Characteristics of Poetry
Wordsworth says poetry must arise from the "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; it takes its origin
from emotion recollected in tranquility." Although a poet should make a poem seem spontaneous, the creation
of it is not. Poetry must reflect emotion, or passion—not simply record observations. The poet must draw from
real-life experiences and describe them in ordinary language, and the poet must "throw over them a certain
coloring of the imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect." It
is the imagination that permits the poet to touch on the eternal, making the surrounding world new and
connecting the people with that world.

Wordsworth analyzes what he sees as four parts of the poet's creative process. The poet first observes
something that creates a powerful emotion. Then he tranquilly contemplates and reflects on the emotion.
During this period the poet may recall other things that relate to the observation itself or to the past in some
way. Such contemplation is personal, intended only for the poet. The tranquility of contemplation disappears
after a time, and then the poet distills all these thoughts, eliminating some and keeping others so that the
original emotion is recreated in a way that is more universal. Finally the poet is ready to write, with the aim of
sharing the emotion with an audience.

Poetry, therefore, doesn't arise from classical models or through an immediate inspiration on any supernatural
level. It arises through experience on an ordinary level—understood and reflected upon. Wordsworth rejects
elaboration or literary devices as artificial and uses numerous examples of earlier poets' work in his discussion.
He hopes to lead readers to meditate on their own emotions and arrive eventually at a more moral and true
conception of themselves and of life. Poetry can achieve the finest level of art by being simple and
straightforward.

Poetry and Prose

Wordsworth devotes much of the Preface to examining his views on poetry and prose. He rejects past
distinctions of one being more heroic or a higher art than the other. His aim is to reveal both as sharing the
most important characteristics of "the language of men." As he simplifies the art of being a poet into being "a
man speaking to men," he essentially erases the lines separating prose from poetry. He sees the distinction of
both as opposed to science, as he understands it, because the relatively new field of science focuses on the
factual. Moreover, he sees the scientist as making discoveries on their own, away from others, and not
influencing the common condition, which for Wordsworth is the essence of poetry. For Wordsworth, who
favors free, straightforwardly rhymed lines over traditional rhyme and meter in poetry, the use of most meter
produces a forced type of "verse" rather than the "naked," simpler poetry that shares truths with prose.
He explains that he chooses to write poetry—with a proper and natural "Poetic Diction"—rather than prose
because it offers more possibilities for his imagination to explore the natural passions of men and give them
form. However, he refuses to acknowledge any strict separation between poetry and prose because both must
spring from emotion and reflection. Wordsworth writes, "They both speak by and to the same organs ... their
affections are kindred, and almost identical, not necessarily differing even in degree." He ends the Preface by
saying that whether he writes in prose or verse, the essential principle of his art—made of imagination and
sentiment—will employ "one and the same language" of meter or prose.

Analysis

The Preface as Writing

Although the Preface itself is a work of prose, Wordsworth quotes much poetry within it and, like his verses,
places the same emphasis on common experience being illuminated by the imagination. It is clearly the
manifesto of an individual explaining a radically new approach to something that has had a long existence
already. In his essay he sets himself as both alone and with the common experience of others as heralding a
new age in understanding and communicating feelings and emotions in a changed world. During his long
career, Wordsworth often saw himself as embarking on new and uncharted paths. He had a broad and thorough
education in the canon of Western literature and used this background in new ways.

Many past movements saw themselves as either inheriting literary traditions or making their own, but
Wordsworth was the first to base his work on the actual lives of ordinary people. The Preface often alternates
between proudly staking out his own principles and calling on the views of his contemporaries, as when he
begins with "Several of my friends are anxious for the success of these Poems." His own voice is loud and
clear, unafraid to criticize even good intentions in others. He seems always aware of a performance art in
which he quotes others against each other, with his own views making the judgments on levels of quality.
Whereas Coleridge wrote with more abstract emphasis on the unusual and even the supernatural, Wordsworth
focuses on the ordinary, the voices of the common folk, of whose assumed simplicity and homogeneity he
approves, even though they may have little experience with poetry.

The Preface was revised and republished several times: beginning from the period when Wordsworth spoke as
a young radical voice through his recognition as a leading literary voice. As both a young and mature man, he
embraced sharply different ideas from those of other poets. During the high point of the Romantic movement,
which the manifesto seems to have ushered in, his emphasis on feeling and individualism became commonly
held.

The Preface on Verse and Prose

The long essay in its various versions returns numerous times to the question of types of writing. Wordsworth
devoted his life to writing, never having had another occupation or seeming to search for one. When his formal
education ended, he traveled as widely as he could with limited resources, and his poems are often shaped by
these experiences. When Lyrical Balladsappeared, it gained considerable attention. Its detractors objected to
Wordsworth's choice of subject matter and disagreed with his emphasis on common people, rustic and even
illiterate lives of poverty, real human passions, and feelings joined with reflection. Although Wordsworth
avoided extreme or vulgar examples of these things, his detractors found such points of interest to be outside
the realm of poetry. Having taken poetry to this new territory, Wordsworth in the Preface proceeds to examine
how the actual forms of writing can best conform to such aims. He goes deeply and repeatedly into comparing
and contrasting the range of powers open to the poet in both prose and poetry.
Past literary movements frequently have emphasized one of these genres over the other, depending on the work
and reputations of the writers of the time. Wordsworth seems intent on using the best of both, not excluding
one in favor of the other, but seeking always to find the most appropriate genre. He spent decades of his life
writing poems in various formats and voices but dispensed with many rules and formulas. The Preface is his
great prose work and never enters poetic territory despite its focus on it. Wordsworth repeats that efforts to
privilege verse or prose are wrongheaded, for both share the same instinct for truth and human passion in the
communal sense. Science, on the other hand, seems new and impersonal, based on facts that poetry cannot
affect or change. His aim to raise his readers' moral sense appears untouched by scientific study or research.

To make prose and verse allies, in a sense, against the potential changes in society is also to limit the poet's
own impact in the future. Also, Wordsworth's emphasis on emotions will eventually lessen his influence, as
new ways of looking at the world will emerge and people will judge the Romantic era with different eyes. In
time, the effort to convince the world that poetry and prose are essentially similar in approach and content can
be judged independently of form will result in these becoming commonplace ideas. However, these ideas were
often ignored by others, as poets and prose writers continued to go their separate ways.

Wordsworth as Judge
The usefulness of the Preface in judging merit in poetry depends on several factors. Wordsworth appears
neither modest nor boastful when citing his own poems and measuring them against others, including works of
well-known writers. A few pages into the text, Wordsworth harshly criticizes the 18th-century poet Thomas
Gray. Quoting lines from one of Gray's few poems, Wordsworth says the verse is far from simple truths that
could be expressed in either prose or more natural-sounding poetry. Wordsworth dismisses more than half of
Gray's sonnet as having no value. Gray's other major work, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," with its
canonical, or scriptural, lines "on the paths of glory" and "far from the madding crowd," remains among the
most quoted and best-loved poems of all time, so it may seem odd to find Gray so faulted. Similarly, Samuel
Johnson's writing is noticeably said to have "contemptible matter."

But throughout, nothing indicates Wordsworth is issuing such opinions specifically to promote his works over
others. He seems to have given serious thought to his views and taken a long and broad view of literature
before his own time. The emphasis remains not on him personally but on what any poet may achieve when he
focuses on the correct foundations for a common and humble source of truth. He appears willing to view his
own work as an experiment in poetic diction, newly formed and purified of what he believes it lacked before.
He admits to putting store in what others think of his work and having doubts about whether he can achieve the
high goals he has set. Wordsworth sees his Lyrical Ballads as innovative and connected to a high level of truth
and significance, if not a high level of life and society.
Ages after the Preface made its judgments, and Wordsworth's own reputation has endured its ups and downs, it
is doubtful many contemporary readers would use either his praise or his criticisms as the basis for their own
reactions to literature. Modern readers can understand how Wordsworth saw people and society and his need to
express new ideas in the hope they would lead to progress in life as well as art. He returns again and again to
the need to take down barriers, as in the traditional separation of prose and poetry, but such forms continue to
exist, even strictly, for some. Passion and commitment to change motivate Wordsworth, and using literature as
a means to effect change can be understood and appreciated in a democratic society that values free
expression. If readers do not actively judge the writers Wordsworth mentions, they can value him for his
openness and ability to take risks in his opinions.

Preface to the Lyrical Ballads | Quotes

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1.
Several of my friends are anxious for the success of these Poems ... and ... have advised me to
prefix a systematic defense of the theory.
Narrator

Wordsworth notes that others, most likely his friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge, recognized that the Lyrical
Ballads were so different from familiar forms of poetry in the past that an explanation would help their
reception and sales.
2.
There would be something like impropriety in abruptly obtruding upon the public ... poems so
materially different.

Narrator

Wordsworth believed he (together with Coleridge) had entered new and different terrain from what the English
reading public was familiar with. He apologizes for such newness and hopes he will encourage more readers to
try to follow his work.

3.
The principal object ... in these Poems was to choose incidents and situations from common
life ... in a selection of language really used by men.

Narrator

This is the heart of Wordsworth's Preface. The poet bases his theory for the type of poetry he wants to create
on the actual lives of ordinary people living at that time, not on classical models. He says his diction—word
choice and vocabulary—will come from the common people, too, filtered through him.

4.
Humble and rustic life was generally chosen because ... the passions of the heart ... can attain
their maturity ... and speak a plainer and more emphatic language.

Narrator

Wordsworth relies on the simple truths of nature and claims to find them in the countryside rather than in the
city. He is not interested in the faster and more diversified state of urban life. He prefers straightforward and
sometimes one-dimensional situations in which truths may emerge without ambiguities.

5.
Such a language, arising out of repeated experience and regular feelings, is a more permanent,
and a far more philosophical language.
Narrator

Wordsworth rejects poets of the past who realistically record their own experiences in elevated language that is
artificial, capricious (fickle), and arbitrary. Such language has little or nothing to do with the event.
Wordsworth aims to express the permanent meanings of natural truths.

6.
Causes, unknown to former times ... blunt ... discriminating powers of the mind ... and reduce it
to savage torpor ... Great national events ... are daily taking place, and the increasing
accumulating of men in cities.

Narrator

Wordsworth rejects the pressures of urbanization, mass events, and confusing communications. These
sentiments typify his reaction to growing industrialization and the shift from rural to urban life. He issues a call
for the literature he would like to create: a literature of the common people and common needs. The Preface is
his hope for action—to live simply, avoid urbanization, and communicate through emotion and imagination.

7.
My purpose was to imitate, and as far as it is possible, to adopt the very language of men.

Narrator

Wordsworth rejects the standard "poetic diction" of elevated language, figures of speech, and personifications
using false phraseology. He hopes to achieve this purpose with no falsehoods of language, clichés, and
emptiness. He aims for good, honest poetry and good sense in a language all can understand.

8.
Some of the most interesting parts of the best poems will be found to be strictly the language of
prose when prose is well-written.

Narrator

Wordsworth devotes much attention to proving for his readers that the old distinctions between prose and
traditional poetry are not valid. He prefers simple, rhymed poetry rather than the forced diction of meter, which
has characterized so much of poetry in the past. He finds no essential differences between good prose and good
poetry when the language and content of both aspire to the common good and truth.

9.
Poetry sheds no tears "such as Angels weep," but natural and human tears ... the same human
blood circulates through the veins of them both.
Narrator

As an example, Wordsworth criticizes the poetic language of John Milton as being unnatural and forced, not
the common images people know from their own lives. Like prose, poetry will not be true and moral in regard
to life if it uses such expressions. It will merely follow meter and form—the opposites of good prose and
poetry both. Wordsworth reiterates his belief that diction should not distinguish poetry from prose.

10.
It shall appear to some that my labor is unnecessary, and that I am like a man fighting a battle
without enemies.

Narrator

Wordsworth knows his struggle to gain acceptance for the type of poetry he is writing may seen futile. Most
people are unaware of the false excesses of the past and don't object to them because they associate them with
poetic tradition. Wordsworth thinks he has the unenviable task of breaking through and revealing more honest
and meaningful expressive powers. Recognizing many readers will not see the sense of his commitment to a
different approach, he wants to introduce a new value system for all literature and at best is unsure how—and
if— his ideas will be understood or accepted.

11.
The Man of science seeks truth ... in his solitude. The Poet sing[s] a song in which all human
beings join with him.

Narrator

Wordsworth makes many sharp contrasts in the Preface. One of the most memorable juxtaposes the solitary
new man of science, whose impact on humanity is presumed to be solitary. In contrast, the poet lives among
the people, listening to and repeating their language. The idea of solitary science without connection to
ordinary lives dates from a time when sciences, as modern times know them, were young.

12.
The poet is chiefly distinguished from other men by a greater promptness to think and feel ...
and a greater power in expressing such thoughts.

Narrator

Poetry, Wordsworth states, is the spontaneous expression of feelings that must be reflected on to express
human truths. Not all men reflect with equal talent, however. As a poet, Wordsworth believes that the ability to
reflect rapidly and truthfully is what makes the poet one with people and yet apart as a creator.
13.
Poets do not write for Poets alone, but for men ... [a poet] must express himself as other men
express themselves.

Narrator

Wordsworth has in mind for himself, and for others who may be inspired by his Preface, the task of being
among the people and also somehow separate. His passions are the same as those of others, and he must use
the language of others. But at the same time, he refines and shapes it and, in his special role, leads his readers
toward a better sense of what is moral and significant in life.

14.
Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion
recollected in tranquility.

Narrator

Wordsworth bases his theory of poetry on strong and universal emotions. These feelings may be experienced
to the fullest when the poet is undistracted. Wordsworth encourages quiet contemplation of the emotion until
the time for thought ends and composing the poem begins. This way, the poet can best recapture the original
emotion. Although it may be long gone by this time, the poet makes it alive again.

15.
Of two descriptions ... well executed, the one in ... verse will be read a hundred times where the
prose is read once.

Narrator

Wordsworth emphasizes the basic connection of good poetry and good prose. But he himself continues to write
poetry because it offers him more opportunities in language and more creativity. He greatly admires honest
prose writing but is convinced poetry will endure longer and be more meaningful over time.

Preface to the Lyrical Ballads | Glossary

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adduce: (v) to cite as evidence

adverted: (v) referred to; mentioned
affinity: (n) closeness to or liking for something
approbation: (n) approval; praise
betwixt: (adv, prep) archaic form of between; not like either one
dissimilitude: (n) strong difference
faculty: (n) mental or physical power; in the Preface, specifically mental power
frantic novels: (n pl) sentimental, sensational literature
germinate: (v) grow; develop, as a seed
ichor: (n) fluid said to be in the veins of the Greek gods
metre or meter: (n) arrangement of words in lines of poetry for rhythmic effect
obtruding: (v) imposing forcefully; intruding
pernicious: (adj) dangerous, harmful
poetic diction: (n) language and vocabulary of verse as opposed to prose; Wordsworth says in the Preface that
he tries to avoid it
prosaisms: (n. pl) ordinary familiar language of the common people, not elevated or literary
superadd: (v) to add to something that has already been supplemented

William Wordsworth | Biography

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Childhood and Education

William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, Cumberland, England, on April 7, 1770. He was the second
of five children born to John Wordsworth, a lawyer and rent collector, and his wife, Anne. The children lost
their mother in 1778, and at age nine William was sent to a local grammar school near Windermere, England, a
setting that figures in many poems in the first two books of The Prelude. He was orphaned by age 13, and his
education came under the care of his uncles. In 1787 he entered Cambridge University, where he began writing
poetry. While studying at Cambridge he embarked on a long walking tour of France and Switzerland,
especially the Alpine regions, that also figures in The Prelude.
In 1791, after receiving his degree from Cambridge, he returned to France, which was in the throes of the
French Revolution (1789–99 social and political upheaval of the monarchy and feudal system). There he fell in
love with a woman named Annette Vallon, who bore Wordsworth a daughter, Caroline, in 1792. The
impoverished Wordsworth was forced to return to England, and after war broke out between the two countries
he was separated from Vallon for years. Eventually he was reunited with his daughter Caroline and for many
years contributed to her upbringing. His experiences in France influenced him greatly in his ideas on the need
for liberation of human rights and reform of living conditions for the people.

Publication
Back in England, Wordsworth was influenced by the writing of William Godwin (1756–1836), who
championed the rights of man and questioned all social controls and authority. The young poet published his
earliest work in 1793 in two collections, An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches. In 1795 he went to live
with his sister Dorothy in Dorset, England. He met fellow Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–
1834), and they became fast friends. In fact, he and Dorothy moved in 1797 to Alfoxden House, near the
village of Nether Stowey, to be close to Coleridge. Both his sister and Coleridge had strong influences on the
development of his work.
His first success came with the 1798 publication of Lyrical Ballads, a collaboration with Coleridge. The
landmark collection marked the beginning of the Romantic movement in English literature and included such
famous poems as Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey" and Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner."
The Preface Wordsworth wrote for the second edition of the Ballads became a Romantic manifesto for poets in
many cultures. It included his famous description of poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings
[that] takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility." It represented a sharp break with the literature of
the previous century, placing great emphasis on the emotions of the individual rediscovering lost sources of
natural wisdom in harmony with the divine.
Wordsworth began writing his epic autobiographical poem The Prelude in 1798 while living in Germany, and
he would continue writing and rewriting it for a half-century, until his death. He settled in England's Lake
District in the north with Dorothy in 1799 and in 1802 traveled to France to meet with Annette Vallon and
their daughter. On his return to England he married a longtime friend, Mary Hutchinson, with whom he would
have five children, two of whom died in infancy. He went on to write some of his best-known poems,
including "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" and "Ode: Intimations of Immortality." Both were published in his
1807 collection Poems, in Two Volumes. The Preface to his Ballads continued to engage his interests as he
revised and expanded it significantly. In his Collected Works of 1850, the text of the Preface follows closely
the words from 1802.

Fame and Legacy

In the course of his life, Wordsworth was deeply affected by several family deaths. He lost a beloved brother,
John, in 1805 and in 1812 experienced the deaths of two of his young children. After being named to a post as
Distributor of Stamps for Westmorland, England, he moved in 1813 to another home in the Lake District in
Rydal Mount, Westmorland. While he was estranged from Coleridge for a time, the other poet's praise of his
work helped to spread his fame. By the 1830s Wordsworth's home was often visited by admirers who
sometimes numbered in the dozens each day. He continued to write as a public figure and became poet laureate
of England in 1843, remaining in this post until his death on April 23, 1850, at age 80. The famous
autobiographical epic, The Prelude, was published by his wife three months later.
Among the most influential of all writers, Wordsworth remains a towering figure of the Romantic movement
and one of the best-loved poets in the English language. His ideas on the special, inspired role of the poet and
the capacity to inspire and teach common language to ordinary people are essential to the Romantic theory of
art over the centuries. His Lyrical Balladsare part of the heritage of English verse, as is their foundational
explanation in the Preface.