“Gross and violent stimulants”: producing Lyrical Ballads 1798 and 1800

Abstract

The Preface to Lyrical Ballads occupies a contradictory place in romantic studies. Its idealization of the figure of the poet, celebration of “low” language and forms, and analyses of poetic inspiration and composition have made it a foundational document both to contemporary and modern accounts of romanticism. The year 1998 saw a number of bicentennial celebrations of Lyrical Ballads and 2000 will see, most likely, scholars noting the two hundredth anniversary of its second edition – a marked contrast to the literary landscapes of 1798 and 1800 that Wordsworth and Coleridge inhabited, dominated as they were, respectively, by the unprecedented popular successes of Lewis and Kotzebue. A similar kind of historical contrast has operated with regard to the Preface. Often celebrated in this century, it was largely rejected by contemporary reviewers and literati, and later by Wordsworth and Coleridge themselves. Modern critics have usually placed it at the center of late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century poetry as its most important critical manifesto, a position that contrasts strongly with that accorded by Wordsworth and Coleridge, who, ironically, spent considerable energy later in their lives distancing themselves from it: Coleridge on LB Preface, 1800–17 The Preface contains our joint opinions on Poetry. (September 1800) Wordsworth's Preface is half a child of my own Brain / & so arose out of Conversations, so frequent … that we could scarcely … say, which first started any particular Thought … yet I am far from going all lengths with Wordsworth (1802)