1814
First Published
3.49
Average Rating
392
Number of Pages
Though displaced in the eyes of twentieth-century readers by the Prelude (written 1798-1805, but unknown to the poet's contemporaries), the Excursion was for three generations Wordsworth's major work. It had bulk, gravitas, sonorous (sometimes beautiful) blank verse, epic pretensions. Published in 1814, it debated in the persons of the Wanderer, Pastor and Solitary the big questions of the the effects of the French and industrial revolutions, education, man in his relation to nature, society, God. As Wordsworth's reputation grew in the 1820s and '30s, the Excursion came, almost ex officio, to seem the grandest poem since Paradise lost. The text of 1814, like the Prelude text of 1805, was later weakened by revision. Reprinted here for the first time, it should go far to explain why Keats numbered the Excursion among the 'three things to rejoice at in [his] Age.'
Avg Rating
3.49
Number of Ratings
45
5 STARS
20%
4 STARS
31%
3 STARS
33%
2 STARS
9%
1 STARS
7%
goodreads
Author
William Wordsworth
Author · 63 books
William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was a major English romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their 1798 joint publication, Lyrical Ballads. Wordsworth's masterpiece is generally considered to be The Prelude, an autobiographical poem of his early years, which the poet revised and expanded a number of times. The work was posthumously titled and published, prior to which, it was generally known as the poem "to Coleridge". Wordsworth was England's Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death in 1850.
