Lyrical Ballads (1798): Wordsworth and Coleridge

Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads changed how people thought about poetry. It was radical because it contained a new brand of wisdom and knowledge, at once enlightening and unsettling for the secure, well-educated elite.

A number of Wordsworth and Coleridge pedantic and snobbish contemporaries found the style and content of Lyrical Ballads uncouth. But the volume was, and is, fluent and vascular with the sort of life and sensation not taught in schools. Lyrical Ballads is as relevant today as when it was first published in 1798.

About the author:

Andrew Keanie gained his doctorate in a study of Wordsworth. He teaches at the University of Ulster and is a poet and musician.

56  pages

ISBN: 978-1-906075-20-0