Lyrical Ballads

397 Pages·1991·1.468 MB·English

by  Brett, R L(Editor)

LYRICAL BALLADS
Also available from Routledge:
A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE
Second Edition
Harry Blamires
ELEVEN BRITISH POETS*
An Anthology
Edited by Michael Schmidt
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Selected Poetry and Prose
Edited by Jennifer Breen
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Edited by Alasdair Macrae
* Not available from Routledge in the USA
Lyrical Ballads
WORDSWORTH
AND COLERIDGE
The text of the 1798 edition
with the additional 1800 poems
and the Prefaces
edited with
introduction, notes and appendices by
R.L.BRETT
and
A.R.JONES
LONDON and NEW YORK
First published as a University Paperback 1968
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or
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Second edition published 1991
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Introduction and Notes © 1963, 1991
R.L.Brett and A.R.Jones
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Wordsworth, William 1770–1850
Lyrical ballads: the text of the 1978 edition with the
additional 1800 poems and the prefaces. —2nd edn
1. English poetry
I. Title II. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 1772–1834 III.
Brett, R.L. (Raymond Laurence) IV. Jones, A.R. (Alun
Richard)
821.7
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Wordsworth, William, 1770–1850.
Lyrical ballads/Wordsworth and Coleridge; the text of
the 1978 edition with the additional 1800 poems and the
prefaces edited with introduction, notes, and appendices
by R.L.Brett and A.R.Jones.
p. cm
Originally published: London: Methuen, 1968. Originally
v
published in series: University paperbacks: UP277.
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
I. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772–1834.
II. Brett, R.L. III. Jones, A.R. IV. Title
PR 5869.L9 1991
821'.7–dc20 91–13985
ISBN 0-203-41387-3 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-72211-6 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-06388-4 (Print Edition)
Contents
Foreword viii
Foreword to the 1991 edition xii
A selected bibliography and list of xiii
abbreviations
Introduction xviii
Lyrical Ballads, 1798
Advertisement 7
Poems 9
Lyrical Ballads, 1800
Love 117
Poems, Volume II 123
Preface 1800 version (with 1802 233
variants)
Notes to the poems 259
Appendix A: Text of Lewti; or, the Circassion Love- 307
Chant
Appendix B: Wordworth’s Appendix on Poetic 311
Diction from 1802 edition of Lyrical
Ballads
Appendix C: Some contemporary criticisms of Lyrical 317
Ballads
vii
Index of titles 341
Index of first lines 343
Foreword
For many years now the student of Lyrical Ballads has had to rely
either upon the edition of H.Littledale, first published in 1911, or
upon that of G.Sampson, first published in 1903.1 However,
Littledale reproduces the 1798 poems only, while Sampson’s
edition is an exact reprint of the 1805 text, though it gives the
readings of earlier versions. In any case both appeared too early
to draw upon the great amount of scholarly work on
Wordsworth and Coleridge completed since that date. The letters
of Wordsworth and his sister, and those of Coleridge, have since
appeared in the admirable editions prepared respectively by
Professor de Selincourt and Professor E.L.Griggs; and Professor
de Selincourt has also given us the Journals of Dorothy
Wordsworth. E.K.Chambers and Mrs. Mary Moorman have
provided excellent biographies of the two poets; Miss Kathleen
Coburn has made available a wealth of hitherto unpublished
material in Coleridge’s Notebooks; and there has been a stream
of critical studies. A new edition not only profits from this
scholarship but makes it possible to provide the student with an
up-to-date bibliography of this work.
The present edition owes much to the work of Miss Helen
Darbishire and Professor E.de Selincourt, the editors of the
Oxford English Texts edition of Wordsworth’s Poetical Works
and to the work of E.H.Coleridge, the editor of the Oxford edition
of Coleridge’s Poems. Their editions stand as monuments of
scholarship which cannot be rivalled or superseded, but,
nevertheless, they do not conveniently provide the student with
1 Cf. also Lyrical Ballads, with a few other poems, N.Douglas, London, 1926
(Facsimile of 1798 ed.).
ix
Lyrical Ballads as it first appeared to the public. The Oxford
Wordsworth, rightly for its purpose, uses the grouping of the
poems and the text chosen by Wordsworth himself for the 1850
edition. Similarly, the Oxford Coleridge uses the 1834 text. Only
by a certain editorial labour can the reader achieve from these the
text and grouping of the poems as they were originally published.
The aim of the present volume is to make available to the
reader the text of Lyrical Ballads as it appeared in print in 1798
and 1800, together with the variant readings of the 1802 and 1805
editions. We have incorporated in the text the Errata which were
issued with the first two editions, but otherwise we have
reproduced the poems exactly as they were first published. We
have endeavoured in the text and by means of notes to provide a
history of the poems from 1798 to 1805, after which
Wordsworth’s poems were merged in the 1815 and subsequent
editions of his collected works and Coleridge’s contributions
were transferred to his Sybilline Leaves of 1817 and to later
collections of his poetry.
Lyrical Ballads was originally published in September, 1798.1
The title-page bore the Bristol imprint and the book was printed
by Biggs and Cottle of Bristol for T.N.Longman of Paternoster
Row, London. While the 1798 volume was in the press it occurred
to the authors that one of the poems, Lewti; or, the Circassian Love-
Chant, might disclose the secret of the authorship, for it had been
published in The Morning Post for April 13th, 1798, and was
known to be by Coleridge. The sheets containing this poem were,
therefore, cancelled and The Nightingale substituted. A few copies
of the volume with Lewti found their way on to the market, but
most copies contain The Nightingale. We have given the text of
The Nightingale where it appeared in the majority of copies and
reprinted Lewti in Appendix A. Soon after publication Cottle
sold the whole of the remaining copies of the first edition, which
had numbered five hundred copies, to Messrs. J. and A.Arch of
Gracechurch Street, London. This firm issued the book with a
new title-page which bore a London imprint.
1 Cf. ‘The Publication of the “Lyrical Ballads”’, R.W.Daniels, Modern
Language Review, vol. xxxiii, 1938, pp. 406–410, and ‘The Printing of Lyrical
Ballads, 1798’, D.F.Foxon, The Library, 5th Series, vol. ix, 1954, pp. 221–241.