Lyrical Ballads

work by Coleridge and Wordsworth

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Article History

Lyrical Ballads, collection of poems, first published in 1798 by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, the appearance of which is often designated by scholars as a signal of the beginning of English Romanticism. The work included Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey,” as well as many controversial common-language poems by Wordsworth, such as “The Idiot Boy.” The “Preface” to the second edition (1800) contains Wordsworth’s famous definition of poetry as the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” and his theory that poetry should be written in “the language really used by men.”

This article was most recently revised and updated by J.E. Luebering.