This selection, chosen from the Oxford Authors critical edition, includes Wordsworth's finest verse, and a large sample of 'The Prelude', his autobiographical poem in blank verse.

William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, Cumberland. In 1798 he published the 'Lyrical Ballads' with Coleridge, settling shortly after in Dove Cottage, Grasmere, with his sister Dorothy. He died at Rydal Mount in 1850, shortly before the posthumous publication of that landmark of English Romanticism, 'The Prelude.'