The Excursion - Being a Portion of 'The Recluse', a Poem


Book Description

First published in 1814, “The Excursion” is the second and only completed part of Wordsworth's three-part work “The Recluse”. It is a long poem that revolves around three central figures: the Solitary, who has lived through the horrors and hopes of the French Revolution; the Pastor, to whom a third of the poem is dedicated; and the Wanderer. “The Excursion” enjoyed popularity in the nineteenth century and is highly recommended for fans and collectors of Wordsworth's fantastic work. Included in this edition is an introductory excerpt from “Reminiscences” (1881) by Thomas Carlyle. William Wordsworth (1770–1850) was an English Romantic poet famous for helping to usher in the Romantic Age in English literature with the publication of “Lyrical Ballads” (1798), which he co-wrote with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. His best known work is perhaps “The Prelude”, a semi-autobiographical poem from his early years which was changed and expanded many times throughout his life. He was poet laureate of Britain between 1843 until his death in 1850. Other notable works by this author include: “The Tables Turned”, “The Thorn”, and “Lines Composed A Few Miles above Tintern Abbey”.




The Recluse


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The Excursion. by


Book Description

William Wordsworth (7 April 1770 - 23 April 1850) was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads (1798). The Excursion: Being a portion of The Recluse, a poem is a long poem by Romantic poet William Wordsworth and was first published in 1814[1] (see 1814 in poetry). It was intended to be the second part of The Recluse, an unfinished larger work that was also meant to include The Prelude, Wordsworth's other long poem, which was eventually published posthumously. The exact dates of its composition are unknown, but the first manuscript is generally dated as either September 1806 or December 1809







The Cambridge Companion to Wordsworth


Book Description

The Cambridge Companion to Wordsworth provides a wide-ranging account of one of the most famous Romantic poets. Specially commissioned essays cover all the important aspects of this multi-faceted writer; the volume examines his poetic achievement with a chapter on poetic craft, other chapters focus on the origin of his poetry and on the challenges it presented and continues to present. The volume ensures that students will be grounded in the history of Wordsworth's career and his critical reception.




Wordsworth and The Recluse


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The Excursion


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Wordsworth Before Coleridge


Book Description

Drawing extensively upon archival resources and manuscript evidence, Wordsworth Before Coleridge rewrites the early history of Wordsworth's intellectual development and thereby overturns a century-old consensus that derives his most important philosophical ideas from Coleridge. Beginning with Wordsworth's mathematical and poetic studies at Hawkshead Grammar School and Cambridge University, both of which tutored the young poet in mind-matter dualism, the book charts the process by which Wordsworth came, not to reject this philosophical foundation, but to reevaluate the indispensable role of passion within it. Prompted by his reading in 1793 or early 1794 of Dugald Stewart's Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, Wordsworth rejected the exclusive rationality of William Godwin's political philosophy and the anti-passionate morality of Alexander Pope's philosophical poetics. Subsequent exposure, between 1795 and 1797, to Cambridge Platonism and English Kantianism supplied the key ideas of mind-nature fitness and multilevel psychological activity that, along with Stewart's analysis of imaginative association, animate Wordsworth's signature philosophy of "feeling intellect," from the initial drafts of The Pedlar and The Prelude in 1798 to the "Prospectus" to The Recluse and The Excursion, published together in 1814. By presenting for the first time a fully nuanced account of Wordsworth's intellectual formation prior to the advent of Coleridge as his close companion and creative collaborator, Wordsworth Before Coleridge reveals at long last the true sources and abiding originality of the poet's philosophical mind.