The Making of Lyrical Ballads

At the Wordsworth Trust, a blog post by Jonathan Kerr looks at the making of Coleridge and Wordsworth's 1798 undertaking, Lyrical Ballads. A little historical context: "Not since the English Revolution had the country faced such alarming upheaval and discord within its borders." More:

On first glance it might not seem like the little collection authored by Wordsworth and Coleridge has much to do with this heady and factional atmosphere. Lyrical Ballads came about in the spring and summer of 1798, when the Coleridge and Wordsworth families lived as neighbours in the secluded village of Holford, Somerset. Wordsworth and Coleridge had only known one another a short time, but they became quick friends and mutually-admiring colleagues. The small village provided both poets with a break from the spirited goings-on of cities like London and Bristol, which could often be dangerous places for young men with unorthodox opinions. Coleridge and Wordsworth, both committed reformers through the early years of the French Revolution, knew this is as well as anybody, and their retreat into the country was motivated as much by concerns for their personal security as anything else.

The time at Alfoxden House (as the Wordsworth residence has come to be called) was one of great production for the poets: both had found in the other a like mind with whom to engage on some of the matters they both saw as most important for the vocation of an aspiring poet. The two met nearly every day, conversing at Alfoxden or on the long walks which both of them enjoyed; their circle (which included William’s sister Dorothy and fellow poet John Thelwall) was small, but over time the poets and their friends began to develop a bold and distinctive new artistic vision. Before long the two began to discuss collaborating on a volume of “experimental” poems, as Wordsworth insisted on calling them. As Wordsworth later explained, the goal was to write poetry which reflected seriously on the lives of humble, rustic people. The collection would also be written in a style of language which imitated the way these people actually spoke, which according to Wordsworth was less artificial and more impassioned. Both poets believed that the language and subject-matter of modern poetry had become ornate, formulaic, and phony, and the two of them offered their collection as a kind of manifesto, which if successful might completely renovate the sphere of English art and letters.

But Wordsworth and Coleridge also had different roles to play in this experiment which would determine just how far the language and events of common life could be adapted to poetry and art. Wordsworth would primarily write about the extraordinary in the ordinary, about the “powerful feeling” which accompanies what seems, on initial glance, to be perfectly commonplace and trivial life circumstances: think, for example, of the overwhelming joy which Betty Foy experiences on simply observing her mentally disabled son in The Idiot Boy. Meanwhile, Coleridge would focus on the ordinary in the extraordinary, exploring how the mind functions in exceptional circumstances...

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