Books

The Friendship: Wordsworth and Coleridge

Average customer rating:

The Friendship: Wordsworth and Coleridge
Adam Sisman
Manufacturer: Viking Adult
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Authors | Arts & Literature | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Fiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

All Deals | Blowout Books | Stores | Books

Biographies & Memoirs | Blowout Books | Stores | Books

Literature & Fiction | Blowout Books | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Thomas Hardy
Love, Life, Goethe: Lessons of the Imagination from the Great German Poet
William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism
The Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts
Edith Wharton

ASIN: 0670038229
Release Date: 2007-02-15

Amazon.com

Many books have been written about William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge that cover their biographies and make critical assessments of their work. In Adam Sisman's The Friendship, for the first time the bond between these two poets is given center stage. The friendship flourished in the aftermath of the French Revolution. The poets met in 1795 when both were in their early twenties, two young idealists disappointed by the lack of expected change in their world following the revolution. They wanted to write a poem that would change the world, that would be accessible to all and would fire the imagination of the most humble. This desire led to the publication of Lyrical Ballads, the beginning of the English Romantic movement, which included Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey."

How did their friendship affect their work? Sisman shows the ways that their bond created competitive tension and fueled their creativity to even greater poetic achievement than might have been achieved alone. The political and social situation of the time was very influential on them, as well as their individual families and romances. They were passionate in all regards, reaching great heights and great depths of feeling. Ultimately, the two men became estranged, and then effected a tenuous reconciliation--one much talked about among their friends and acquaintances, because they had both become famous. Although Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy despaired of Coleridge, believing that he would never stop drinking and taking opium, and though their professional differences came to separate them, while they collaborated they created poems of great beauty, encouraging one another to reach lofty heights in the realms of literary expression. For these two, for a glorious time, the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. --Valerie Ryan

Book Description

The story of the legendary friendship between Wordsworth and Coleridge

The friendship between William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge produced dazzling results. From it came Lyrical Ballads, the volume that kick-started the Romantic Movement in England. Rarely have two such gifted writers cooperated so closely. They met in 1795 when both were in their early twenties, and in the euphoria of mutual discovery these brilliant and idealistic young men planned a poem that would succeed where the French Revolution failed—a poem that would, quite literally, change the world. In this wonderfully lively and readable account, acclaimed author Adam Sisman explores their passionate and tempestuous bond and the way in which rivalry bred tension between them. Though much has been written about this extraordinary duo, no previous biographer has considered them together. The result offers insights into the rich yet neglected topic of friendship and tantalizing glimpses of the creative process itself.

Biographia Literaria: Biographical Sketches of my Literary Life & Opinions

Average customer rating:

Biographia Literaria: Biographical Sketches of my Literary Life & Opinions
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Biographies | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Qualifying Textbooks - Spring 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Coleridge's Poetry and Prose (Norton Critical Edition)
The Grasmere and Alfoxden Journals (Oxford World's Classics)
Coleridge: Early Visions, 1772-1804
The Complete Poems (Penguin Classics)
Prelude: 1799, 1805, 1850 (Norton Critical Edition)

ASIN: 0691018618

Book Description

Biographia Literaria has emerged over the last century as a supreme work of literary criticism and one of the classics of English literature. Into this volume poured 20 years of speculation about the criticism and uses of poetry and about the psychology of art. Following the text of the 1817 edition, the editors offer the first completely annotated edition of the highly allusive work.

Average customer rating:

The Hidden Wordsworth
Kenneth R. Johnston
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Authors | Arts & Literature | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Average customer rating:

William Wordsworth
Hunter Davies
Manufacturer: Sutton Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Authors | Arts & Literature | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Criticism | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Biographies | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
ASIN: 0750930756

Book Description

Drawing on the letters and diaries of Wordsworth, this work on the poet's entire life remains the only full-length popular biography.

Wordsworth's Second Nature: A Study of the Poetry and Politics

Average customer rating:

Wordsworth's Second Nature: A Study of the Poetry and Politics
James Chandler
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Qualifying Textbooks - Spring 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

The Politics of Nature: William Wordsworth and Some Contemporaries, Second Edition

ASIN: 0226100812

Slim: The Standardbearer : A Biography of Field-Marshal the Viscount Slim (Wordsworth Military Library)

Average customer rating:

Slim: The Standardbearer : A Biography of Field-Marshal the Viscount Slim (Wordsworth Military Library)
Ronald Lewin
Manufacturer: Combined Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Military | History | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Biographies | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Defeat Into Victory
The River War: An Account of the Reconquest of the Sudan

ASIN: 184022214X

The Gang: Coleridge, the Hutchinsons, and the Wordsworths in 1802

Average customer rating:

The Gang: Coleridge, the Hutchinsons, and the Wordsworths in 1802
John Worthen
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Authors | Arts & Literature | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Biographies | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

The Friendship: Wordsworth and Coleridge
Thomas Hardy

ASIN: 0300088191

Amazon.com

British academic John Worthen gives a new spin to the oft-told tale of English Romanticism's best-known coterie. It's well known that William Wordsworth married Mary Hutchinson, that Samuel Taylor Coleridge hopelessly loved her sister Sara, and that Dorothy Wordsworth served as intimate friend to them all, not least her brother William. Worthen deepens our knowledge by closely analyzing every available document--diaries, letters, household accounts--from a pivotal six-month period in 1802 when Coleridge wrote "Dejection: An Ode" and Wordsworth began work on one of his most famous poems, "Ode: Intimations of Immortality." Only by delving into the artists' daily lives, Worthen asserts in a thoughtful preface, can we truly understand the way their creativity fed off the natural world and their personal relationships. Taking critical issue with previous biographers (particularly Richard Holmes), whom he argues used source material very selectively to serve their own agendas, Worthen seeks a fairer, fuller view. He reminds us that the Wordsworths' highly unconventional lifestyle shocked many people other than Coleridge's soon-to-be-estranged wife, Sarah (better treated here than in many books on the period). He asserts that there is no documentation to suggest that Sara Hutchinson regarded Coleridge's declaration of adulterous love with anything but shock and horror, again reproving scholars who overread the evidence. Most crucially, Worthen makes clear the key importance of the interchange among Coleridge and the Wordsworth siblings, which shaped both men's poetry and placed Dorothy at the group's emotional center. The academic (though accessible) prose and dense lines of argument may intimidate casual readers, but this excellent study turns literary monuments back into human beings. --Wendy Smith

Book Description

"A Night or two after a worse Rogue there came, The head of the Gang, one Wordsworth by name . . ."—Coleridge, A Soliloquy of the full Moon, April 1802

Over a dramatic six-month period in 1802, William Wordsworth, S.T. Coleridge, Wordsworth's sister Dorothy, and the two Hutchinson sisters Sara and Mary formed a close-knit group whose members saw or wrote to one another constantly. Coleridge, whose marriage was collapsing, was in love with Sara, and Wordsworth was about to be married to Mary, who would be moving in beside Dorothy in their Grasmere cottage. Throughout this extraordinary period both poets worked on some of their finest and most familiar poems, Coleridge's Dejection: An Ode and Wordsworth's Immortality Ode. In this fascinating book, John Worthen recreates the group's intertwined lives and the effect they had on one another.

Drawing on the group's surviving letters, and poems, as well as Dorothy's diaries, Worthen throws new light on many old problems. He examines the prehistory of the events of 1802, the dynamics of the group between March and July, the summer of 1802, when Wordsworth and Dorothy visited Calais to see his ex-mistress and his daughter Caroline, and the wedding between Wordsworth and Mary in October of that year. In an epilogue he looks forward to the ways in which relationships changed during 1803, concentrating on a single day—11 January 1803—in the lives of the group.

William Wordsworth: A Life (Oxford Lives)

Average customer rating:

William Wordsworth: A Life (Oxford Lives)
Stephen Gill
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Authors | Arts & Literature | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

The Cambridge Companion to Wordsworth (Cambridge Companions to Literature)
The Visionary Company: A Reading of English Romantic Poetry
The Major Works: Including The Prelude (Oxford World's Classics)
Coleridge: Early Visions, 1772-1804
Shelley: The Pursuit (New York Review Books)

ASIN: 0192827472

Book Description

Based on intimate knowledge of the poet's manuscripts, on a fresh look at contemporary records, and on a study of the mass of material that has appeared since the last serious biography, a quarter-century ago, this new account of Wordsworth focuses on what was most important to him - his life as a writer. The common notion is that the older Wordsworth betrayed his youthful, radical self to become a prosy Tory bore. By contrast, this intelligent and authoritative biography demonstrates that once the poet had returned to the Lake District, determined to live dedicated to poetry at whatever cost, his life took on a unity and purpose it had previously lacked. His politics certainly changed, and his poetic power waned, but from 1799 almost until his death in 1850, Wordsworth single-mindedly shaped his own life in submission to an imaginative possession whose importance he never doubted. It was, in its way, a heroic life. Wordsworth suffered numbing blows from the death of friends and family, including three of his own children. Critics reviled his poetry for over twenty years, and he never made enough money by his pen to live on - unlike his dear friend Scott. Yet his dedication to his art did not waver. In middle age he knew that contemporaries valued him as a moral sage; in old age he suffered the embarrassment of being a cultural icon. The lucid narrative that Stephen Gill draws out is the story of that hard-won triumph: its purpose is to bring readers back freshly to poetry that is full of human understanding and experience, and a tested, sober faith in 'Man's unconquerable mind'.

Average customer rating:

Wordsworth: An Inner Life
Duncan Wu
Manufacturer: Blackwell Publishing Limited
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Authors | Arts & Literature | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Criticism | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Children's Literature Guides | Literature | Children's Books | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

William Wordsworth's The Prelude: A Casebook (Casebooks in Criticism)

Accessories:

philosophy hope in a jar daily moisturizer

ASIN: 1405113693

Book Description

From his work editing Wordsworth's juvenile poetry (1785-1790), Duncan Wu came to understand that much of the content of the poet's later great work drew on early childhood experiences, particularly delayed mourning arising from his parents' deaths. This original study is the first fully to investigate the impact of this formative experience on Wordsworth's poetry and to integrate it into a critical account of how his art developed from 1787 to 1813. In doing so it seeks to explain the importance of Wordsworth's great epic, The Recluse to his work as a whole, and looks at how some of it got written and why it was left unfinished at his death.

The book includes 20 illustrations from original notebooks retained by the Wordsworth Trust in Grasmere, and, among its numerous discoveries, presents the first annotated reading text of The White Doe of Rylstone (1808) with its important 'Advertizement'. Written in an accessible manner, this revealing study will be of great interest to students and researchers of Wordsworth's poetry.

William Wordsworth (British Library Writers Lives)

Average customer rating:

William Wordsworth (British Library Writers Lives)
Stephen Hebron
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Look Inside Teen Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (British Library Writers' Lives)

ASIN: 0195215605

Book Description

Poet William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was the leader of the Romantic movement in British literature. He was strongly influenced by the ideology of the French Revolution and by the landscape of Britain's Lake Country, where he lived for most of his life. Among his most famous poems are "Tintern Abbey" (published in Lyrical Ballads, which he wrote with his friend and colleague Samuel Taylor Coleridge), "Ode: Intimations of Immortality," "The Solitary Reaper," "Daffodils," and numerous sonnets. Wordsworth's poetry is a staple of the U.S. high school English curriculum, and his home, Dove Cottage, is a much-visited tourist site in Britain's Lake District. About the series: The British Library is in a unique position when it comes to biographical research, especially concerning British authors. This revered institution boasts the world's largest collection of original manuscripts, as well as an outstanding collection of letters, personal diaries, first editions, and other literary treasures. The titles in this series take full advantage of this vast source of documentary evidence by illustrating each of these lively writers' biographies with state-of-the-art facsimiles of pertinent documents and reproductions of art from the period. Penned by expert biographers, each of these books also contains an index, further reading list, and a chronology of the writer's life.

Books:

Books