William Wordsworth

The 21st-Century Oxford Authors makes available for a new generation of readers the key works of the major British authors in freshly conceived, authoritative, and readable editions. Designed both for the student and the general reader, each volume offers a generous selection of texts, both poetry and prose, accompanied by thorough annotation and with a critical introduction by a leading scholar in the field.

William Wordsworth

The Wordsworth volume in the list-Century Oxford Authors series is the most comprehensive selection currently available of the poetry and prose of one of the finest poets in the English language. The familiar poems from Wordsworth's 'Great Decade' are all included, but they are complemented by a more than usually generous selection of the best poems from his later years. The extracts from the Guide to the Lakes will be a revelation to many readers, as will the political prose of the Convention of Cintra. All of the material is presented in chronological sequence, so that the reader can see how Wordsworth's changing concerns were expressed in prose as well as poetry. Work which Wordsworth published is separated from that which he did not reveal, which will enable the reader to trace through successive published volumes the development of Wordsworth's public poetic self, while also being able to follow the growth of the body of poetry which, for whatever reason, Wordsworth did not choose to make public when it was writtenu Me Prelude being the greatest and most obvious example.

Seamus Perry is Massey Fellow in English Literature, Balliol College, and a Lecturer in the English Faculty, University of Oxford. His publications include Coleridge and the Uses of Division and Coleridge's Notebooks: A Selection (both OUP).

Stephen Gill is retired Professor of English, University of Oxford and a Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford. He is a Trustee of the Wordsworth Trust and has published extensively on Wordsworth, including William Wordsworth: A Life (1989), Wordsworth and the Victorians (1998, both OUP), The Prelude (1991), and Companion to Wordsworth (2003, both Cambridge University Press). His edition of The Salisbury Plain Poems with Cornell University Press in 1975 inaugurated The Cornell Wordsworth Series and he has edited Victorian novelsuby Gaskell, Dickens, Trollope, George Eliot, Gissingufor OUP and Penguin. His previous edition of Wordsworth inaugurated the OUP Oxford Poets series in 1984.

Stephen Gill is retired Professor of English, University of Oxford and a Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford.