Why was lyrical ballads published anonymously

The Ancient Mariner , which was originally published as The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere undergoes major revisions, cuts and a new place in the collection. There are three aspects of this change that are pertinent to understanding the circumstances in which it was published: the change in location, the revised name and the revisions within the poem. The poem initially engulfed the first 53 pages of the collection. In the second edition the poem is buried in the end of the first volume and only retains 46 pages.

This alludes to the overwhelming criticism of the poem. First, the poem is moved. It was often criticized for its strangeness and archaic language. This revision is clearly depicted in the title change as it retains its strangeness but not its convoluted spelling. Many changes in the actual poem lend to clarity and understanding.

The two poems are initially separated by a few smaller poems, then in the edition of Lyrical Ballads they are intentionally moved next to each other. However, the interconnectedness of these two poems is inexhaustible.

They divert in narrative but converge in message. LB Edition Vol. Tags: Rare Item Analysis. Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. And how did these two revolutionary poets appear to their contemporaries? Like Gods? Or mere men? One of the most vivid accounts of them was written by the wonderfully impressionable essayist William Hazlitt, who met both of them for the first time in the year of the publication of The Lyrical Ballads.

He first glimpses Coleridge, a round-faced man, dressed in a short black coat "which hardly seemed to have been made for him", descending from a coach in Shrewsbury. What strikes Hazlitt so forcibly is how much Coleridge talks, and the brilliance and the intellectual variousness of that talk; how the poet digresses and dilates as he passed with such seeming ease from subject-to-subject, from politics to literature to metaphysical speculation and back again, as if "floating on air or sliding on ice Young Hazlitt is left feeling, by comparison, dumb, inarticulate, helpless, "like a worm by the wayside, crushed, bleeding, lifeless Hazlitt also described how the poet looked.

His mouth is "gross, voluptuous, open, eloquent, his chin good-humoured and round; but his nose, the rudder of the face, the index of the will, was small, feeble, nothing And then there is the rest of his person, "rather above the common size, inclining to be corpulent", or, like Lord Hamlet, "somewhat fat and pursy, with long, pendulous hair falling in smooth masses over his forehead", the sort of hair "peculiar to enthusiasts, to those whose minds tend heavenward To Hazlitt, Wordsworth seems plainer altogether, less like someone descended from the stars; a man who talks very freely and naturally, "with a mixture of clear, gushing accents in his voice, a deep, guttural intonation, and a strong tincture of the Northern Burr, like the crush on wine Both poets were in the habit of composing their poems as they walked through the countryside, though their preferred terrains differed.

Coleridge liked ground that he could pit himself against - uneven, hacking his way through the straggling branches of a copse-wood. Wordsworth liked walking up and down a straight gravel path, intoning as he went, or some similar spot where "the continuity of his verse met with no collateral interruption".

And what sort of impression did the sight of a poet composing poems out loud in the open air make upon the peasantry of the Lake District? Fortunately, some of them were interviewed by a certain Canon Rawnsley after Wordsworth's death.

And you may," continued the good dame, "be very well sure as she didn't understand or make sense out of 'em, and I doubt that he Wordsworth didn't know much about them either himself. But, howivver, there's a great many folks as do, I dare say The response to The Lyrical Ballads, from those who said that they did understand the book, was mixed. The poets had started work on the poem together, but soon Coleridge had flown off on the wings of poesy and left Wordsworth grounded.

And when it was finished, Wordsworth took exception to some of the words that Coleridge had used. There were odd adjectives and fake medievalisms running throughout it - such as the word "eldritch". Wasn't this book supposed to be written in the language such as men were actually using, for God's sake? Coleridge agreed - in part - and got rid of a lot of these odd archaisms in later editions of his poetry.

But the judgement of posterity in general has been exceedingly favourable: this book is a milestone in the history of English poetry because it helped to legitimise the possibility of writing guiltlessly, and with great force and passionate simplicity, about the human heart.

And this permission to stop being coy about the self, this overpowering recognition that it is the individual who counts above all things else, changed everything - in literature, politics and art.