Customer Reviews

William Wordsworth - The Major Works: including The Prelude (Oxford World's Classics)

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The comments have been about Wordsworth, not about the edition in question.

Potential purchasers should know that Stephen Gill has created a strange volume. Wordsworth lived to be 80, and revised his poetry all his life, leaving a Complete Works divided into thematic categories.

Most editors respect the rule of honoring the author's final intentions, so that a revised version of a poem is "what the author really meant."

Gill tosses that rule overboard, and in fact does exactly the opposite: his stated intent is to reprint the *earliest* version of any given poem. So, for instance, we get "The Ruined Cottage" as a work in itself, not as later incorporated into "The Excursion."

Also, less debatably, Gill arranges the poems in sequence of composition, the better for students to trace WW's development.

Why does Gill look to the earlier works? His explanation is that it goes along with the chronological sequence. Looking at a poem WW wrote in 1801, it does not help if we are reading revisions from 1835 or whenever.

But Gill has a better, unstated reason. LATE WORDSWORTH SUCKS. The man's revisions of his own work are almost never for the better, and the older poet's lack of inspiration is painfully evident.

If you want to give WW a fair shot -- if you want to understand what in his poetry blew people's minds and made him a giant of Romanticism -- then you gotta break the Textual Editing Rules, and you gotta read the poems as WW first wrote them, not as he later revised them.

This, therefore, is the edition to read.

Those readers of poetry who discount Wordsworth as merely a poet who "worships" Nature and holds emotion over rational thought are giving him only a shallow reading and relying on the obvious. When Wordsworth's work is read as a whole, and in context with his contemporaries and historical events, then one can begin to appreciate the depth and significance of the philosophical thought behind his poetry.
His reliance on Nature comes not from a worship of it, rather from the belief that philosophical and social issues can be found and answered in Nature. This does not contradict modern scientific thought, which relies upon the observation of the natural world through experimentation. It also eliminates the need for a rigid religious structure, because divinity can be found in Nature. Wordsworth teaches us that we learn, and grow, once we accept that we are part of the natural world, and that Nature does not exist to be conquered.
The feeling and emotion is a "natural" reaction, and therefore should not be discounted and inhibited. His poetry is an expression of this. It is not an attack on rational thought--it is a belief that one can learn through observation of the natural universe, not merely the reading of books and "dead forms."
Wordsworth was a master poet and a genius. he is well-worth the time it takes to study him.

Wordsworth is a beloved writer of mine. I love his passionate and direct descriptions of Nature, his reflective calm, his deep moral sense, his simplicity and beauty of language. I love the thoughtfulness of his poetry, and its music.
His lines are memorable lines and they evoke sensations sweet felt in the heart. He is a poet who brings with him a sense of both the sublime and the simple combined.
There are of course many non- memorable lines and many poems which seem at times to be versified prose. But in the best Wordsworth in the great Wordsworth there is the Literature which makes us Love Life More.
At some point I think each and every reader can be uplifted by this great poetic soul.

*****

Wordsworth is one of the few laudable English Romantic poets who, with Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age with his 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads. "The Prelude," a semiautobiographical poem of his early years is one of his most notable poems. "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" (also known as "Daffodils") is phenomenal.

It is noteworthy that Wordsworth was Britain's Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death in 1850.

This edition is crisp, and worth purchasing if you're looking for a good introduction to the mind and verse of Wordsworth.

*****

The book is a very compilation of Wordsworth's best works. On the negative, the book arrived with a knife slice down the side of the cover. Otherwise the book is set very nicely with good commentaries at the back on each poem. I found this book had the best background information on the text.

Quick point. Not only does the editor pick out the best versions of Wordsworth's poems (as the other reviewer so accurately stated) but unlike other editions of Wordsworth I have seen, the poems are printed in a single column in readable type.

THIS edition ROCKS!!!!

I assume everyone reading this review has an opinion about Wordsworth, so I will simply note he is one of my favorite poets. You may disagree. FOOEY on you if you do!!!

In this edition, works of wordsworth are ordered in the chronological order of their composition. The book consists of an introduction to Wordsworth life and poetry, his famous poems, the 1805 version of the prelude, and prefaces to the lyrical ballads and some letters on poetry. Minimal notes are given to help the reading. Overall it is a clear and compact edition which is suitble to admirers of Wordsworth poetry, and to scholars of his works who are interested in his poetic development.

William Wordsworth is another favourite of mine.

As others have wisely noted he had the great misfortune to live a very long life and fulfil those very fears in his early best work that his poetic vision was fading as he was ageing. He became the thing he had despised.

I remember first coming upon him as an adolescent and I was just stunned by the beauty and simplicity of his verse in its expressions of the beauty of nature and how the philosophical mind engaged with nature. I was in tune with his sad decline of the sublime vision of childhood and the possibilities of re-discovering that vision in the workings of nature `recollected in tranquillity'. My God, he changed me!

Then, when you've read and re-read the Intimations of Immortality and Tintern Abbey you discover the Lucy poems!

Of course Wordsworth is going to feature heavily in my novel `A Song for Jo' . He has an influence on the intellectual and emotional development of the two main characters, Jo and Chris, who are college students studying English. Other great literature from Keats, Emily Bronte and Shakespeare (and more) is worked into the narrative. It is a love story with a difference!

People of all ages and sex have enjoyed it.

It's available on Amazon - please follow the link.


A SONG FOR JO

'We are Seven' is based on an actual encounter Wordsworth had with a child near the River Wye in 1793.

To say he idolises an imaginary idea of Nature that doesn't exist except in Disney Land is not right. The kind of Nature he writes about exists in the Lake District.

Wordsworth writes about the harsh side of Nature as much as the unambiguously positive sides of it.

This book is most recommended and readers should dispell all those cliches that are stated about the 'Romantic' poets. The term 'Romantic' wasn't used until a long time after most of these poems were written.

Wordsworth's poem "Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" is one of the master works of the English linguage. It is a poem which gives great pleasure and will greatly assist the reader in his or her own writing. Coleridge
writes in his famous literary biography that Wordsworth did not take seriously the Platonic philosophical heart of the poem. I
cannot know how accurate Coleridge's evaluation is.

I, personally, do not really like "The Prelude". It has informative points and tells something of Wordsworth's attitude. He seems quite pleased about the presence of "Negro Ladies" (his words) in London which may say something of his attitude toward race. If the poem were shorter, I should like it more I believe. Keats has a lot, usually unflattering, about Wordsworth's use of the first person in his poems.

The "Lucy" poems do not rank with "Intimations of Immortality". I find them works of great craftmanship rather than the genius that flows over in "Intimations of Immortality".

Coleridge goes into who wrote what lines in the Coleridge poem
of the Ancient Mariner, but the Wordsworth contribution is substantial.

"We Are Seven" is a look into the heart of a young child. It is
in keeping with "Intimations of Immortality" in that respect. "Intimations" is without doubt the finer poem.

Anyone who loves the English language or would master the language should read Wordsworth at his very best. "Intimations" in quality of language rises to the level of Shakespeare. Better can be said of no poetry. But, unlike Shakespeare, Wordsworth wrote a great deal of second or third rate poetry.

If you would see the English language at or near its best, read "Intimations". It may give you as it has given many lovers of poetry thoughts "too deep for tears".