The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - the Original Classic Edition

Wordsworths Poetical Works, vol. 1 - The Original Classic Edition

Finally available, a high quality book of the original classic edition.

This is a new and freshly published edition of this culturally important work, which is now, at last, again available to you.

Enjoy this classic work today. These selected paragraphs distill the contents and give you a quick look inside:

Errata in the previous volumes are corrected: several thousand new notes have been added, many of the old ones are entirely recast: the changes of text, introduced by Wordsworth into the successive editions of his Poems, have all been revised; new readings-derived from many MS. sources-have been added: while the chronological order of the Poems has, in several instances, been changed, in the light of fresh evidence.

...As to the place which Notes to a poets works should occupy, there is no doubt that numerous and lengthy ones-however valuable, or even necessary, by way of illustration, -disfigure the printed page; and some prefer that they should be thrown all together at the end of each volume, or at the close of a series; such as-in Wordsworths case-The River Duddon, Ecclesiastical Sonnets, The Prelude, The White Doe of Rylstone, etc.

...I have the greatest admiration for the work which Professor Dowden has done in his edition of Wordsworth; but the plan which he has followed, in his Aldine edition, of giving not only the Fenwick Notes, but all the changes of text introduced by Wordsworth into his successive editions, in additional editorial notes at the end of each volume-to understand which the reader must turn the pages repeatedly, from text to note and note to text, forwards and backwards, at times distractingly-is for practical purposes almost unworkable.

...The editors and publishers of the future may possibly prefer it to the plan now adopted, and it will commend itself to many readers from the mere fact that it was Wordsworths own; but in an edition such as the present-which is meant to supply material for the study of the Poet to those who may not possess, or have access to, the earlier and rarer editions-no method of arrangement can be so good as the chronological one.

...On the other hand, the series of Poems composed during a Tour in Scotland, and on the English Border, in the Autumn of 1831-and first published in the year 1835, in the volume entitled Yarrow Revisited, and Other Poems-contains two, which Wordsworth himself tells us were composed earlier; and there is no reason why these poems should not be restored to their chronological place.