Wordsworth's Poetry and Prose: A Norton Critical Edition (Norton Critical Editions)

This Norton Critical Edition is a great pleasure whether you're a student or looking to refresh your knowledge of Wordsworth. There are plenty of helpful notes and annotation and the editing is carefully accomplished. If you're new to Wordsworth I'd particularly recommend the NCE in preference to other books that offer the poetry but with limited additions.

The book arrived in iffy quality, and some of the poems are hard to read due to the markings, but it was still cheaper than other options.

Everybody knows that Anthony Wordsworth is really good at soccer (or "football" as it's sometimes called), but who knew the guy could also write? Watch out, Maya Angelou! Duck and cover, Rod McKuen! There's a new sheriff in Poem Town.Simply put, this is the best collection of verse I've read since Jewel's A Night Without Armor (1998). It's well (words)worth the $27.49 asking price.Keep up the good work, Anthony.

We finally have a Norton Critical Edition of Wordsworth's shorter verse: his most important shorter poems in addition to the 1805 version of his epic autobiographical The Prelude, which is also included here. The Norton Critical Edition series is praised for its careful editing, generous selections and for its compendious contextual and critical analysis. This collection of Wordsworth's most significant poetry and prose is no exception. It contains a generous selection of both verse and prose but it is heavily weighted towards Wordsworth's earlier, more highly regarded poetry. With the inclusion of the full 1805 version of The Prelude, it duplicates a portion of the venerable Norton Critical Edition of the three different versions of that lengthy poem.Wordsworth combined a sensitive, insightful response to nature with an adventurous spirit and free-thinking, radical politics during the revolutionary age that was the final years of the 18th century. This confluence of intellectual and spiritual energy in his early writing was almost magical and it produced some of the finest, most beautiful lyric poetry in the English language. His collaboration with Samuel Taylor Coleridge on the first edition of Lyrical Ballads in 1798 became something of a touchstone for the Romantic movement in English poetry. That collection featured one of the finest and most palpably sensual lyric poems ever written: Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey. Wordsworth declared himself "a worshipper of nature" in that paean to beauty and memory and its effect on English verse in that galvanic era of the French and American revolutions and the earliest music composed by the young Beethoven was electrifying.Wordsworth is something of a paradox as a poet. He insisted in his prose "manifestos" that poetry should celebrate the rustic, the down-to-earth, the common and ordinary of humanity and of human affairs. Yet his writing style is reminiscent of Milton in its grandeur and in its lofty rhetoric. He lived in relative isolation in the picturesque Lake District of northwestern England whilst writing about the French Revolution and continental European politics, contemporary English society and events. As he aged he became more conservative - some claimed more rigid in his thinking - and his poetic powers appear to have waned. Nevertheless, his career lasted some 60 years and his output was vast although undeniably variable in its quality. Wordsworth's earliest, freshest poetry is his finest. In it he created some of the most beautifully spiritual verse yet written, poetry that celebrated the force and power of nature and which introduced a new attitude towards the natural world. The 18th century fascination with artifice and appreciation for the highly ordered in art, which was reflected in the poetry of the age. was overthrown and a new naturalism was born. Wordsworth used nature as if it were a mirror to highlight the spiritual aura surrounding human life in poems like Ode: Intimations of Immortality and the various versions of The Ruined Cottage and The Prelude.This Norton Critical Edition contains excellent critical analysis from 28 different contributors, including Coleridge, Shelley and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Annotations are extensive and headnotes make informative introductions to the poems. Prose and letters place Wordsworth's verse into historical context, making this a stellar collection for undergraduate students. Wordsworth's poetry is worth savoring for its beauty and for its deep insight. This is an exemplary edition from which to read and savor one of the finest poets in the English language.

This is a wonderful addition to the Norton Critical Editions series and a beautifully chosen selection of Wordsworth's writing. Halmi includes the entire 1805 text of The Prelude, freshly edited, and his choices of recent criticism are helpful. Use it in school? Absolutely, but also take in one's knapsack while hiking or when needing inspiration.

It contains all poems of wordsworth along criticisms