THE FOLIO SOCIETY

It was in the poems of the Lyrical Ballads (1798) that the 28-year-old William Wordsworth announced himself as the radical new voice of English poetry. Writing about rustic characters in pastoral settings, in a deceptively simple style, he challenged conventions of form and content to create a poetry as revolutionary as his politics. His concern was for 'human passions, human characters, and human interests', which carried with it political and philosophical overtones.

In these poems simple images provoke profound responses, to engender in the reader a hunger for social reform and human well-being. Yet Wordsworth's verse is far from abstract or pious. His loves are childhood memories, personal experiences, imaginative insights, whether contemplating the 'mighty heart' of London, the Swiss Alps, Revolutionary France, or his beloved Lake District (a region with which he has now become synonymous). 'His soul', remarked Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 'seemed to inhabit the universe like a palace, and to discover truth by intuition'.

All the major poems from Wordsworth's 'great decade' (1797-1808) are represented here, from the narratives of the Lyrical Ballads - including 'The Ruined Cottage', 'Simon Lee' and 'The Idiot Boy' - to the famous odes, lyrics and sonnets composed during the years at Dove Cottage, Grasmere, such as 'The Brothers', 'I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud' and 'Ode. Intimations of Immortality'.

The full, 1805 version of The Prelude, Wordsworth's deeply personal account of his childhood, growing up and the development of his own mind, is also included in this collection.