Selected Poetry of William Wordsworth (Modern Library Classics)

I ordered this because wanted a sturdier, fuller edition of Wordsworth to replace the thin-ish yellowing paperback selection of his verse that I already had.Overall I'm content with the Modern Library selection, binding and typesetting--- very readable, the cloth cover feels comfortable in the hand, and the volume, while large, is not too heavy.The poems are arranged chronologically by date of first composition (n.b., not revision: We get the 1850 version of the Prelude, but it appears alongside the verse of 1805, when he first completed it). There are no notes at all. Some would have been useful--- e.g., to inform us where poems first appeared (the Lyrical Ballads just appear alongside everything else), or which version of a poem we were reading. The general editorial strategy seems to have been always to include the latest version of the poem: As mentioned, we get the 1850 Prelude (would have been nice if the edition had made this clear), and we also get the revised version of "The Thorn" (W, unfortunately, was shamed into revising the widely mocked lines, "I've measured it from side to side: / 'Tis three feet long, and two feet wide.")Wordsworth's famous poems all seem to be here. I would have liked to see some of the "Poems on the Naming of Places" included, but you do have to have to leave something out.There's a typo in book 4 of the Prelude, line 24: Instead of "Yon azure smoke betrays the lurking town," it reads "You azure smoke ..." I also noted a missing quote mark in, I think, one of the Matthew poems, but I can't find it now.Overall, this is a solid edition of Wordsworth's verse which I expect will hold up well over the years.

Great collection indeed.

Nice physical book and most of the poems are here, but to me it is kind of unforgivable that the editor did not indicate that the version of the Prelude is the 1850 one. This is a significant oversight. That gives it four stars. I am still looking for a really good one-volume of his poetry, one that includes the entire Prelude of 1805. The Everyman collection has selections, as do most of the collections. I guess I am asking for too much since the Prelude is a book in itself. A two-volume set like the Library of America books would be great, with one of the Prelude of 1850 before Wordsworth had a lobotomy and one volume with the complete poems. I have the Selincourt edition, which is really great for his brilliant comments. A must have, and you can buy a newly-published copy in paperback from Oxford but the print is not crisp and it has those super-white pages that for me make the reading uncomfortable. If you want good font get a used copy at Abebooks or somewhere, the Oxford 1933 edition. There are many solid ones out there.

To me, poetry is like a swimming pool into which I have to dip my toe to test the temperature of the water before I jump in. I have to take it just a little bit at a time and allow myself to absorb it as well as enjoy it, and this volume of Wordsworth is something I find accessible and welcoming but challenging enough to engage my interest. Unlike his contemporaries of the Romantic movement like Blake and Byron who immersed themselves in wild fantasy and dark mythology, Wordsworth writes about things just about everybody can relate to -- nature, neighbors, family, nation, self-realization, glow-worms -- using direct language that avoids obscure metaphors. Granted, not many of us these days find the opportunity to observe a shepherd at work or hike over the Alps, but Wordsworth did, and tells us about it with imagination and exuberance.The characters in Wordsworth's poems are vagrants, wanderers, beggars, figures from local legends, generally people who live outside of the mainstream or are forgotten by society, the humblest of the humble. There is Johnny the errant Idiot Boy, who is sent off on a horse to fetch a doctor for his mother's ailing friend but instead takes a personal journey governed by his limited imagination. There is the isolated Lucy, "a violet by a mossy stone" who "dwelt among the untrodden ways." There is old Timothy the Childless Father, who tries sorrowfully to maintain his spirits by continuing his hunting excursions after a period of mourning for the death of his last daughter.The central piece in this collection is "The Prelude," Wordsworth's autobiographical poem. After explaining his desire to look beyond traditional poetical subjects like history and chivalry, he proceeds to document the development of his aesthetic, noting the importance of solitude to a budding poet, discussing his years at Cambridge and his undistinguished academic performance, his walking tour through Europe at the time of the French Revolution, and his sympathies for the common man arising from his love of nature. Several sonnets written around 1803 show him turning his attention to national matters, such as lamentations for England's lack of current literary figures as great as Milton and calls for defense against Napoleonic invasion ("To the Men of Kent," "In the Pass of Killicranky").Adoration of nature is Wordworth's most salient attribute, and, having found his pictorial voice from an early age ("An Evening Walk" is astonishingly sophisticated verse for a seventeen-year-old to have written), he devotes the lion's share of his poetry to idylls, pastorals, dithyrambic odes to the beauty of the the landscapes around his boyhood home in Grasmere. With the exception of some London street scenes in "The Prelude" and elsewhere, there are very few references in his poetry to urbanization and industrialization; reading it, one would think England a permanently medieval country of quiet rustic villages and sparsely populated woodlands. It would seem that materialism and the chaos of living in an increasingly technological society mattered not at all to Wordsworth, and his poetry has all the more longevity because of it.

This is a fine edition, but I agree with the other reviewer that there should have been some notice that it includes the 1850 version of The Prelude. With the exception of a few lines here and there, the 1805 version is the one that should have been included. The introduction by David Bromwich is ok, but too short. Browmich's Disowned By Memory is a better intro.

Very average paper quality. The binding is also not good enough.

I'm really pleased with this book the layout is great. I'm not very good at reading poetry but I'll give it ago.