The book includes the Jacobin A Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff (1793), infused with the doctrines of Tom Paine; the liberal republican 'prose poem' The Convention of Cintra (1809), the Tory apologetics of Two Addresses to the Freeholders of Westmoreland (1818), and the welfare-state philosophy of the 1835 Postscript in which Wordsworth married the Coleridgean concept of a society leavened by its 'clerisy' to a devastating critique of laissez-faire 'political economy'. The extensive commentary provided by Owen & Smyser to these texts has been converted to footnotes for ease of use.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) needs little introduction as the central figure in Romantic poetry and a crucial influence in the development of poetry generally. This broad-ranging survey redefines the variety of his writing by showing how it incorporates contemporary concepts of language difference and the ways in which popular and serious literature were compared and distinguished during this period. It discusses many of Wordsworth's later poems, comparing his work with that of his regional contemporaries as well as major writers such as Scott. The key theme of relationship, both between characters within poems and between poet and reader, is explored through Wordsworth's construction of community and his use of power relationships. A serious discussion of the place of sexual feeling in his writing is also included.

John Thelwall was London Corresponding Society's most prominent orators and was tried for high treason along with Thomas Hardy and John Horne Tooke in 1794. This edition brings together Thelwall's most important political writing ranging from scientific pamphlets and writings on the art of elocution, to political philosophy and journalism.

Daniel Robinson provides a comprehensive guide to studying Wordsworth at undergraduate level.

The American 1920s had many names: the Roaring Twenties, the Jazz Age, the Dry Decade, and the Flapper generation. Whatever the moniker, these years saw the birth of modern America. This volume shows the many colorful ways the decade altered America, its people, and its future. American Popular Culture Through History volumes include a timeline, cost comparisons, chapter bibliographies, and a subject index. Writers as diverse as Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and Damon Runyon presented distinct literary visions of the world. Jazz, blues, and country music erupted onto the airwaves. The exploits of Babe Ruth and Murderers' Row helped save baseball from its scandals, while such players as Red Grange and Notre Dame's Four Horsemen brought football to national prominence. Yo-yos, crossword puzzles, and erector sets appeared, along with fads like dance marathons and flagpole sitting. Rudolph Valentino, talkies, and Clara BoW's It girl appeared on the silver screen. Prohibition indirectly led to bootlegging and speakeasies, while the growing rebelliousness of teenagers highlighted an increasing generation gap.

William Wordsworth's poem 'The Prelude' is a fascinating work, both as an autobiography and as a fragment of historical evidence from the revolutionary and post-revolutionary years. This volume gathers together 13 essays on 'The Prelude', and is useful as a companion for students and general readers of Wordsworth's greatest poem.

In this second edition of William Wordsworth: A Life, Stephen Gill draws on knowledge of the poet's creative practices and his reputation and influence in his life-time and beyond. Refusing to treat the poet's later years as of little interest, this biography presents a narrative of the whole of Wordsworth's long life--1770 to 1850--tracing the development from the adventurous youth who alone of the great Romantic poets saw life in revolutionary France to the old man who became Queen Victoria's Poet Laureate. The various phases of Wordsworth's life are explored with a not uncritical sympathy; the narrative brings out the courage he and his wife and family were called upon to show as they crafted the life they wanted to lead. While the emphasis is on Wordsworth the writer, the personal relationships that nourished his creativity are fully treated, as are the historical circumstances that affected the production of his poetry. Wordsworth, it is widely believed, valued poetic spontaneity. He did, but he also took pains over every detail of the process of publication. The foundation of this second edition of the biography remains, as it was of the first, a conviction that Wordsworth's poetry, which has given pleasure and comfort to generations of readers in the past, will continue to do so in the years to come.

Wordsworth’s process of revision, his organization of poetic volumes and his supplementary writings are often seen as distinct from his poetic composition. Bates asserts that an analysis of these supplementary writings and paratexts are necessary to a full understanding of Wordsworth’s poetry.

Wordsworth wrote that he longed to compose 'some philosophic Song/Of Truth that cherishes our daily life'. Yet he never finished The Recluse, his long philosophical poem. Simon Jarvis argues that Wordsworth's aspiration to 'philosophic song' is central to his greatness, and changed the way English poetry was written. Some critics see Wordworth as a systematic thinker, while for others he is a poet first, and a thinker only (if at all) second. Jarvis shows instead how essential both philosophy and the 'song' of poetry were to Wordsworth's achievement. Drawing on advanced work in continental philosophy and social theory to address the ideological attacks which have dominated much recent commentary, Jarvis reads Wordsworth's writing both critically and philosophically, to show how Wordsworth thinks through and in verse. This study rethinks the relation between poetry and society itself by analysing the tensions between thinking philosophically and writing poetry.