To read the collected poems of Wordsworth is to defeat the myth of the divided man, the revolutionary youth whose ardent idealism gave way to the tired rhetoric of the Tory place-holder.Wordsworth's life-work is a coherent whole, the parts of which are a single and organic opus of autobiographical confession depicting the growth of a poet's sensibility.

In this two-volume edition, containing Wordsworth complete works (apart from The Prelude, which appears seperately in this series), the editor has returned, as Wordsworth had himself wished, to the final copy of the texts prepared in the poet's lifetime. The poems, arranged in chronological order and showing the development of Wordsworth's themes and forms, are illuminated by the editor's extensive notes and by the inclusion of the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads.