Since Its First Publication In February 1897 Herford S The Age Of Wordsworth Has Remained And Continues To Remain A Basic Book On European Romanticism In General And The English Romanticism In Particular. The Second Edition Was Printed In The Same Year A Few Months Later, In November 1897, And The Third Edition (Revised) Was Brought Out In The Year 1899. Since Then The Book Has Been Reprinted Many Times, And That Is A Standing Testimony To The Immense Popularity And Usefulness Of The Book.In The Preface To The First Edition Herford Wrote In December 1895, About A Year Before The Actual Publication Of The Book: The Task Of Presenting This Vast And Complex Literature With Some Semblance Of Order And Unity Has Been No Light One. But The Enormous Popularity Of The Book For Over A Century Is A Glowing Testimony To His Remarkable Success In Performing The Arduous Task He Had Set Upon Himself. His Analysis Of Romanticism, Which Is The Organizing Conception Of This Book Is As Sharp As It Is Illuminating And Offers A Clear Idea Of The Various Phases Of European Romanticism, A Movement That Swept Over Europe From Roughly The Middle Of The Eighteenth Century To The Middle Of The Nineteenth Century. What Deserves Special Mention Is The Fact That All Along Herford Assiduously Maintains The Distinction Between Literary History And Biography.While The Book Is Indispensable For Any Student Of English Literature, The Students Of The History Of Thought And Culture Studies Will Also Find This Luminous Book Delightfully Readable And Interesting.

Originally published in 1932, this book contains extracts from the works of key Romantic writers and those in their circle to illustrate the friendships between them. The events and topics covered include the deaths of Keats and Shelley as well as trips some of the authors took together. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the relationships among the key figures of Romantic literature.

Many editions of William Wordsworth's mature work are available but general readers have never before had access to the poetry he wrote during his school and university years. This selection from the poetry he composed between 1785 and 1790 reveals him to have been remarkably accomplished from an early age and shows that from the time he began to write he was already preoccupied with precisely the themes that would later be explored more fully in The Prelude, the great poem of his maturity. The Earliest Poems offers a unique opportunity to examine something normally withheld from our gaze: the apprenticeship of a great writer. Duncan Wu's introduction and his comprehensive notes guide the reader through versions of Wordsworth's work to show how he graduated from the early experimentation of pieces such as 'Beauty and Moonlight' to An Evening Walk, an impressive poem of over 600 lines which was published in 1793. This book spans the first five years of Wordsworth's career, revealing how the traumas of his early life forged his vision and produced the sensibility that would make him a most gifted celebrant of the human spirit. In effect, they also chronicle the evolution of British Romanticism out of the aesthetic morass of the late eighteenth century. Book jacket.