To the Springs of Romanticism: Yarrow Revisited

Abstract

From 1822, when Memorials of a Tour on the Continent, 1820 was first published, until 1835, Wordsworth produced no new collection of poems. That statement must be read with care. There were new editions and re-collections of poems; also individual newly written poems were published. By the second decade of the century, Wordsworth was sought after by editors rather than he seeking them. Even individual poems by well-known authors were attractive to publishers of anthologies. These were, in our terms, coffee-table books of poetry, well-bound volumes, some published annually, containing a wide range of literary material. Examples which included short poems by Wordsworth were a collection called The Keepsake and Alaric Watts’s Literary Souvenir. It is also important to recognize with Gill (1989, p. 337, and 1998) that Wordsworth’s preparation of new collections of previously published works in a reconsidered order, although not quite a substitute for fresh composition, was new creativity in the sense of a presentation of a fresh format of poetic experience.