Introduction From Wordsworth's Poetic Collections

8/2/2019 Introduction From Wordsworth's Poetic Collections

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INTRODUCTION

Tis study ocuses on the poetry and prose relations, bibliographic orms,

competitive poetry markets, readerly negotiations and parodic responses thatinormed the creation o Wordsworths published collections o poetry rom1800 to 1820. wo intertwined stories govern the chapters that ollow. Te rstdescribes how Wordsworth used supplementary writings to shape and engagereaders in his poetic collections romLyrical Ballads, with Other Poems (1800),toPoems, in wo Volumes, by William Wordsworth (1807), Te Excursion (1814),

Poems by William Wordsworth (1815) and Te River Duddon volume (1820).1Te second relates how Wordsworths critics and parodists responded to and

were connected with the designs o those collections.Beginning with the publication o the 1800 Lyrical Ballads,Wordsworth

employed a variety o supplementary writings to make a case or his poetry asa valuable addition to the Old Canon o poets, an innovation on ballad col-lecting, and a means o lending authority to his singular poetic credentials.2Trough preaces, ootnotes, endnotes, headnotes, hal-title pages, epigraphs,advertisements and other paratexts,3 Wordsworth not only presented himselas an important contemporary poet, but as an editor, anthologist, literary andcultural critic. Te prose interlacing Wordsworths collections rom the 1800

Lyrical Ballads to his 1820 TeRiver Duddonvolume provided him with oppor-tunities to guide readers through his poems and draw their attention to howhis work as a collector and commentator added aesthetic, cultural and historicdepth to his books o poetry.

As much as Wordsworths supplementary writings chart how readers mightengage with his poetry, they also play out his struggles in the rst two decades

o the nineteenth century to rame, rerame, combat and absorb the myriadresponses o reviewing critics and parodists into his poetic collections. In thosepublications Wordsworth exercises two principal supplementary strategies onethat encourages connective sympathetic readings o his poetry and another thatattempts to stave of reductive criticism. Tese vacillating interactions between

poetry and prose, a poet and his readers, not only shaped Wordsworths poetic


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2 Wordsworths Poetic Collections, Supplementary Writing and Parodic Reception

collections; they led to his inclusion in what Jefrey Cox has called Britains liv-ing pantheon o poets in 1820.4

Whether in Lyrical Ballads,Poems in wo Volumes, Te Excursion,Poems byWilliam Wordsworth or TeRiver Duddon volume, Wordsworths supplemen-tary writings oen comment on individual poems or highlight poetic pathwaysbetween poems within a collection.5 His endnote to Te Torn in volume 1o the 1800 Lyrical Ballads exemplies this type o supplement because it doesboth. Te note reects on how readers might interpret Te Torn, but it also asksthem to consider the internal coherence oLyrical Ballads and points out howthe repetition o words both within a poem and amongst poems gures theaesthetic and cultural power o his collection. Prose notes such as the Note toTe Torn eature Wordsworth as an interpretive guide who prompts readers toexplore and weigh the cumulative, linguistic signicance o a published collectionthrough orward (visionary) and backward (revisionary) hermeneutic move-ments. Wordsworths editorial presence appears even more requently in his 1807and 1815 collections in the orm o ootnotes, endnotes, headnotes and sectionheadings. In these spaces he oen reminds readers o how his particular brand orevision poetic sel-echoing and return can animate words, as they redoundupon poem to poem, and readers, as they journey through his volumes o poetry.6

Wordsworth also used supplementary writings to orge connections betweenhis past, present and uture publications. Tese paratexts usually take the orm o

prose essays or notes. However, they can be poems as well, such as his Prospec-

tus to Te Excursion which maps out a variety o ways to link together his past,present and uture poems. While the supplementary writing described in theprevious paragraph deals with individual poems or the connective shape o a par-ticular collection, this type o supplement oen accounts or and juxtaposes thetemporal and spatial connes o the real world with the physical and gurativelayout o Wordsworths books o poetry. Such writing operates, as Paul Magnu-son maintains generally about paratexts, as thresholds that relate Wordsworths

poetry to particular public discourses.7Wordsworths projection in the Preace to Te Excursion o his amalgamat-

ing works as an ever-expanding Gothic cathedral exemplies this second type osupplementary writing. His Gothic guration describes each o his worksas syn-ecdoche and metaphor or an overarching poetic system in which each part o

the whole ofers a passageway rom which readers can move orward and a vitalplace to which they can return.8 Tis type o paratextual cycling underscoresWordsworths poetics and reveals the cultural importance that he attributes tothe power o his collected works.9 Such cycling a tracing and retracing o thebiographical and psychological history o the poet also provides readers withopportunities to piece together the development o an emerging national poet.Correspondingly, in his publications aer Te Excursion, several o Wordsworths


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Introduction 3

supplementary writings such as his opographical Description o the Countryo the Lakes (1820) invite readers to participate in the process o collectingtogether the origins and ends o his poetry as a means o creating a ctive historyo Great Britain.

Locating Wordsworth in Romantic Period Book History

At the beginning o the nineteenth century, preatory, marginal and end mate-rials were common eatures o verse and prose publications. Te currency othese supplementary writings underpinned a revolutionary print age in thelast third o the eighteenth century that saw an enormous increase in the types

and numbers o books made available to readers, the importance o mediatingbibliographic proessionals and the ashioning o authors or public consump-tion.10 Like much o the burgeoning reading public in the 1780s and 1790s,

Wordsworth encountered new and reprinted poetry in newspapers, magazines,periodicals, chapbooks, miscellanies, anthologies and single-author publica-tions.11 Moreover, in the wake o the French Revolution, authors and a nascentclass o proessional critics heatedly vied with one another in these print ormsto explain how and why to write, publish and read poetry.12 When Wordsworth

published his rst slim volumes o poetry,Descriptive Sketches andAn EveningWalk, in 1793 with Joseph Johnson, he took part in a dynamic poetry industrydriven by the complementary and competing interests o authors, publishers andreviewers.13 All o these groups, however, were concerned with how the biblio-

graphic and linguistic orms o the printed book might predict, respond to anddirect the tastes o a rapidly expanding and ragmenting reading public.14

In Te Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (2004), William St Clairtraces this movement towards a more bookish and book-minded culture backto one court case in 1774,Donaldson v.Beckett.15 Te ruling on this case, whichefectively ended perpetual copyright and upheld Queen Annes statute o 1710,had several lasting efects on publishers, booksellers, writers and readers in GreatBritain.16 Te House o Lords decision in avour o the Scottish publisher Don-aldson curtailed the monopolistic dealings and perpetual copyright practices oa cartel o London publishers and booksellers throughout much o the eight-eenth century. Tis tightly-controlled publishing industry limited the accessreaders had to books through the price, number o editions and types o works

printed. Following the Donaldson ruling, a renzied competition began in GreatBritain among publishers and booksellers to secure older printed materials that

were returning to the public domain.One result o this competition was a sharp increase in afordable books or

middle-class readers that included a tremendous amount o poetry previouslyunavailable to that potential reading public.17 London and Edinburgh publishers


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issued new miscellanies and anthologies o English language poets rom Geo-rey Chaucer to Edward Young that established what St Clair calls the OldCanon: the rst ormal canon o poetry in English to be made widely andcheaply available, the most stable, the most requently reprinted, and the longestlived. St Clair also maintains that these Old Canon poets were so entrenched inthe educational system that the reading nation was probably, to a large extent,commensurate with the reach and availability o these texts.18 Furthermore,because the Donaldson ruling upheld Queen Annes statute law o 1710, new

publications by contemporary authors aer 1774 were only guaranteed copy-right protection or ourteen years, until copyright was extended conditionallyto twenty-eight years in 1808, and then to an unconditional twenty-eight yearsor the lie o the author in 1814.

Although intellectual property was a pressing concern throughoutWordsworths career (and in the 1830s and early 1840s he did agitate to extendcopyright beyond the poets lietime), how to sell books was Wordsworths moreimmediate interest in the rst two decades o the nineteenth century.19 For a

poet such as Wordsworth, intent on establishing himsel as an important voiceor contemporary English poetry, creating a collection o poetry required payingcareul attention to the physical layout o the book.20 When Wordsworth andColeridge reer to readers pre-established codes o decision in the 1798 Adver-tisement toLyrical Ballads, and when Wordsworth urther describes the publictaste and readers known habits o association with poetry in the 1800 Preace

toLyrical Ballads, they certainly have aesthetic issues in mind, but how ar thistaste is healthy or depraved depended on the bibliographic and linguistic ormso the books readers had access to as well as their content.21

Wordsworths poetic collections imitate many o the design characteristicso Old Canon miscellanies and anthologies o poetry in the last third o theeighteenth century, which were mediated by the presence on the page o editorsre-presenting English poetry. However, his designs were more strongly inuencedby the simultaneous ballad revival that brought attention to book layouts inunprecedented ways through the anthologizing and antiquarian practices o edi-tors such as Tomas Percy in his Reliques o Ancient Poetry (1765).22 Alongsidethese collections o the past, Wordsworth learned rom and began to contend withcontemporary poets who routinely employed preatory, marginal and end materi-

als in their books to create a brand and establish a market or their poetry.Tese intensive decades o literary collecting, authorial presentation, repack-

aging, authorization and publicity have their own difuse antecedents in theearly eighteenth century when changes to page layouts gradually transormed

printed books into multiorm objects that dramatized the page as a conversation(or debate) among authors, editors, publishers, critics and readers. Te ootnote

particularly acilitated these changes by making room on the same page or an


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Introduction 5

author and an editor.23 While ootnotes initially were used as an objective schol-arly tool or evaluating the accuracy and validity o a text,24 editors most notablyRichard Bentley also deployed them to re-author entire literary works.25 Alex-ander Popes Te Dunciad, in Four Books (1743) satirically encapsulates many othese Augustan age print developments.26 Replete with mock-editorial Scriblerus

persona, accumulated preatory documents, end materials and ootnotes, TeDunciaddepicts an impending cultural dark age brought about by hack writingand power struggles between authors, editors, publishers, printers, booksellersand critics. Popes overwrought ootnotes, which spatially overwhelm the poem,embody his ears that marginal print gures had usurped the primary role o theauthor. Ironically, Pope capitalizes on those same notes to deend and solidiy hisauthorial identity. His ootnotes provided him with contextual and spatially con-tiguous opportunities to engage in sel-promotion, literary criticism, gossip andcultural reections. Regardless o how strongly Te Dunciaddenigrates Augustan

print culture, Popes ootnotes demonstrate that eighteenth-century authorshipwas shaped through the margins o the page and depended on the seemingly sec-ondary producers o literature who tra cked in those margins.

Although writers in the second hal o the eighteenth century proposed newdenitions o originality and creative genius that would seem to have separated

primary authors rom secondary print producers, distinguishing how literaryworks were created and by whom became increasingly complex.27 Te antiquar-ian and popular vogue that began in Great Britain in the 1760s or recovering,

collecting, translating, re-presenting and authenticating oral ballads, songs,tales and epics altered how late eighteenth-century readers, writers and pub-lishers conceived o poetic publications. James Macphersons Works o Ossian(17605),28 Tomas PercysReliques o Ancient Poetry, and Tomas Chattertons

posthumously published Rowley Poems (1777) challenged literary theorists,critics, authors and readers to reimage and redene the roles that writers andreaders, poetry and prose, might play in books o poetry.29 Whether regardedas authentic or countereit, Macphersons Ossian and Chattertons Rowley

poems provoked inquiries into the validity, value and identity o their editorialand authorial personae.30 I the announced authors o these poems were ctional Macphersons Ossian poems were purportedly the translated works o a third-century Scottish/Gaelic bard and Chattertons Rowley poems were supposedly

the discovered writings o a eenth-century monk then the editorial personaorganizing each o these collections might also be held suspect. I every part othese books could be a abrication, including the editorial ramework, then all

parts would need to be read closely, comparatively and contextually.Tese authorial and textual controversies engendered new questions about

what constitutes and authorizes a literary work. Could a countereit containtruth, or was a work divested o its authority i it did not aithully testiy to or


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mimetically portray the authors real experiences? As Marjorie Levinson argues,hoax poems not only impressed upon their readers the knowledge that readingis more than and diferent rom the verbalizing o an inscribed content or thediscovery o an authorizing authorial interest, they highlighted the act that lit-erary meaning is prooundly determined by the contexts within which a readersituates a work.31 Historical contexts, editorial reconstructions and authorialintentions came under intense public scrutiny all o which empowered and

placed a burden on readers to investigate and authenticate.Numerous Romantic writers lauded the lyrical and emotional qualities o

these poems as authentic and regarded the truths in these works to be contingenton how their structural organization (poetic arrangements and supplementarymaterials) elicited imaginative responses rom readers.32 Furthermore, as Mar-garet Russett recalls, Macpherson and Chatterton were generic innovators,

who mixed together poetry and prose in order to orge an authorial persona:I Macphersons innovation was to publish prose as poetry, Chattertons wasto produce a poetic corpus in the service o articulating novelistic character.33

While these authorial creations maniested themselves through the prosing opoetry and the poeticizing o ctional characters, they also were a unction ohow the editorial prose and margins o the page inormed Macphersons andChattertons poetic narratives.

PercysReliques was an equally inuential and in contrast to Macphersonsand Chattertons works critically authorized collection o poetry, which in the

last third o the eighteenth century inuenced the poetic and editorial practices omany Romantic poets, as well as the expectations o poetry readers.34 Published inthree volumes, theReliqueswent through our editions between 1765 and 1794,and, with each edition, their editor Tomas Percy increasingly made his presenceknown as the guiding orce behind the construction, organization and presenta-tion o a poetic history. In the Preace to the rst edition, Percy points out, Each

VOLUME, or SERIES, is divided into three books, to aford so many pauses,or reecting places to the reader and to assist him in distinguishing between the

productions o the earlier, middle, and the latter times.35 Percys collection pre-sents British history as the progress o poetry rom age to age. His introductorymaterials, headnotes, ootnotes, endnotes and glossary call attention to that pro-gression by setting up a system o cross-reerences that sends readers backwards

and orwards through the volumes in search o historical, lexicographical andpoetic connections between the periods and poems he demarcates.

Percy ashioned the Reliques as a collection that would appeal to multipleaudiences by combining antiquarian pursuits with new tastes or rustic bal-lads and lyric poetry that captures simple, unadorned emotional outpourings.Reecting back on his editorial methods in the Preace to the ourth edition,Percy declares that [h]is object was to please both the judicious Antiquary, and


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Introduction 7

the Reader o aste; and he hath endeavored to gratiy both without ofend-ing either.36 In his preace to the 1800 Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth is awareand wary o the reading publics abiding interest in Macphersons, Chattertonsand Percys mediating presences and constructions o the poet37 a concernthat Wordsworth explicitly addresses in his Essay Supplementary to the Pre-ace (1815) when he denigrates Macphersons work while celebrating Percys.

Wordsworth also built on many o Percys editorial manoeuvrings in his sup-plementary writings which highlight local histories and encourage textual andhistorical travel through his volumes.38 However, Wordsworths methods oauthorial presentation more closely imitated the sel-ashioning techniques oCharlotte Smith and Robert Burns who through their mixing o supplemen-tary prose and poetry convinced the public o their authenticity as natural,lyric poets whose works simply and aithully testied to their personal histories,emotional states and cultural moment.

In response to readers and reviewers interest in her volumeElegiac Sonnets,and Other Essays (1784), Charlotte Smith quickly published a second editionin 1784 that reprinted her dedication to William Hayley and Preace whileeaturing several new poems.39 By 1800 Smiths slim 1784 publication hadgone through nine editions expanded into two volumes in the 1790s thatreprinted old and added new preaces (six in total), sonnets intermingled withother poems, ootnotes and endnotes. Trough these paratextual manoeuvringsand poetic reorderings, Smith weaves together a biographical narrative (inter-

spersed aer 1789 with engravings) or readers to ollow, highlights her growingcultural acuity, oregrounds her desire or sympathetic responses and invitesreaders to testiy to the cumulative value o her poetry volumes and novels. Evenmore resoundingly than these compounding editions, her posthumously pub-lishedBeachy Head, Fables, and Other Poems (1807) prompts readers to reecton her literary and cultural signicance through an editors elegiac preace ofsetby Smiths endnotes, which occupy nearly hal the book and relate botanical andanthropological details, literary and olk traditions, British and world histories.

Like Smith, Robert Burns quickly responded to public interest in hisPoems,Chiefy in the Scottish Dialect(1786) by adding new poems to a series o rapidly

published editions that modied and expanded a mediating textual apparatus.Aer the rst edition, Burnss paratexts, which include a growing list o his sub-

scribers, deal with several problems o poetic authenticity with which Smith whose title page grounds her English heritage in Bignor Park Sussex was notconronted. In her multiplying preaces and notes, Smith is concerned with howto authorize hersel as a genuine lyric poet and emale sonneteer. By contrast,Burns and his Kilmarnock publisher used the 1786 Preace and subsequentDedication to the Noblemen and Gentlemen o the Caledonian Hunt to estab-lish Burns as an independent but humble rustic heir o Scottish bardolatry, while


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the accompanying ootnotes and concluding glossary translate the language othis new Scottish bard or contemporary Edinburgh and London readers. Teseootnotes give English language explanations or Scottish words, oral traditions,heroes and customs while also identiying several o Burnss literary reerences,

particularly those to Macpherson and Shakespeare. Correspondingly, the glos-sary, which grew with each single- and then two-volume edition, provides anextensive list o Scottish to English terms.

In contrast to the editorial prose in Burnss collections, which authorizes himas a modern Scottish bard or English readers, Erasmus Darwins two-volumesecond edition oTe Botanic Garden; A Poem in wo Parts. Part I. ContainingTe Economy o Vegetation. Part II. Te Loves o Te Plants. With Philosophical

Notes (1791) attempts to substantiate his poetic credentials through scientic-minded supplementary prose. Darwins Advertisement, Apology, and Preace,ollowed by extensive ootnotes and endnotes, explain botanical and geologi-cal ndings, examine creation stories and conceptions o the cosmos, and detailCarl Linnaeuss classication system o the natural world. Along with Smithsbotanically picturesque and Burnss border-crossing notation, Darwins volumesextended the possibilities or how a poet such as Wordsworth might appeal tomultiple audiences and establish credibility by intertwining geographic tour-ing and poetic exploration with newer scientic discourses. Marilyn Butler alsomaintains that aer Darwins publication,

many o the most successul and intellectually ambitious poems o the period had oot-

notes, along with other eatures oTe Botanic Graden: such as a narrative poem withan archaic, perhaps mythological setting and style, and ootnotes, o necessity rag-mented and nonholistic, that limited themselves to positivistic contemporary act.40

Few poets around the turn o the century were as attuned to these late eighteenth-century authorial manoeuvrings, paratextual deployments and bibliographicorms as S. . Coleridge, Wordsworths 1798 Lyrical Ballads collaborator. Col-eridges letter on 28 May 1798 to their riend and printer/would-be publisher

Joseph Cottle demonstrates how invested Coleridge and Wordsworth were indesigning the layout o their volume:

Cottle, my dear Cottle, I meant to have written you an Essay on the Metaphysics oypography; but I have not time. ake a ew hints without the abstruse reasons or

them which I mean to avor you 18 lines a page, the lines closely printed, certainly,more closely than those o the Joan (Oh by all means closer! W. Wordsworth) equalink and wide margins. Tat is beauty it may even under your immediate care minglethe sublime?41

Coleridge overtly juxtaposes his specications about line spacing, lines per page,marginal width and ink blackness with Cottles recent edition o his riend


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Introduction 9

Robert Southeys Joan o Arc(1796), but his letter also eatures Wordsworthstypographical presence Wordsworth wrote in the parenthetical aside, Oh byall means closer!. Tis redoubled excitement, undergirded by Coleridges play-ul threat o writing Cottle an essay on the Metaphysics o ypography, revealsColeridges and Wordsworths conviction that their particular page layouts or

Lyrical Ballads could produce beautiul and even sublime efects.42In contrast to the wide margins and excepting the initial two-page Adver-

tisement paucity o supplementary prose in the 1798 Lyrical Ballads, a yearearlier Coleridges Poems by S. . Coleridge. Second Edition. o which are Now

Added Poems by Charles Lamb, and Charles Lloyd is lled with prose writingsthat call attention to how he reorganized and revisedPoems on Various Subjects,by S. . Coleridge, Late o Jesus College Cambridge (1796). Coleridge struck outtwenty-three o the 1796 poems while adding thirteen new ones, and opened upthe second hal o the volume to his riends Charles Lloyd and Charles Lamb.Following the contents page in the second edition, Coleridge included a newdedicatory poem about his ormative relationship with the Reverend GeorgeColeridge, an amended Preace to the First Edition, and a Preace to the Sec-ond Edition. Beyond this stacking o new and old introductory materials, hetransormed the endnotes rom the 1796 volume nearly twenty pages intoootnotes and added several new headnotes and ootnotes. Roughly a third othe way through the 1797 volume, he also inserted a three-and-a-hal page proseIntroduction to a sonnet section prexed with the hal-title page Sonnets,

Attempted in the Manner o the Rev. W. L. Bowles.43

Another new hal-titlepage inscribed Supplement appears three-ourths o the way through the vol-ume, ollowed by a three-page prose Advertisement that prepares readers or theconcluding mixed-author section o the volume.

Several o Coleridges prose writings in the 1797 volume oreground his inter-est in Macpherson, Chatterton and Friedrich Schiller, and align his poetry withthe recent tradition o sonneteering, poetic touring and picturesque border cross-ings practised by Charlotte Smith and William Leslie Bowles. However, other

prose inserts style him as the editorial head o and mouthpiece or an emerginggroup o poets printed and sold through their ellow poet Joseph Cottle, whooperated out o Bristol and London.44 Coleridges internal Advertisement tothe nal mixed-author section o the volume lays out his connective role in this

network o poetic association and highlights the contemporary sociability o his1796 and 1797 volumes. In that Advertisement, Coleridge thanks Cottle or

publishing his volume while also pu ng the second edition o Cottles Poems publicity re-echoed in the ensuing poem o the Author o Poems PublishedAnonymously, at Bristol. Ten, Coleridge announces that he has excised a noterom the 1796 edition, connected to An Efusion On An Autumnal Evening;

Written in Early Youth. In its place he ofers a lengthy apology to Samuel


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Rogers and his readers because, in that 1796 note, he asserted, that the tale oFlorio in Mr. Rogers Pleasures o Memory, was to be ound in the Lochleveno Bruce.45 Although Coleridge retracts these plagiarism charges and dubs hisexplanation an unsolicited and sel-originating apology, he continues to pointout Rogerss lack o originality I do (and still do) perceive a certain likenessbetween these two stories in contrast to his own poetry, mixed together withLloyds and Lambs.

Te 1796 endnote that he hal-apologies or reads more like Coleridgesattempt to acquit himsel o inormal charges I have been told that he has

plagiarized rom Rogers, as well as a strategy or distinguishing his growingpoetry circle rom Rogerss popular, eight-edition, heavily endnoted, associative,loco-descriptive poem Te Pleasures o Memory, with Other Poems (17926). Teensuing 1796 endnote to Coleridges poem Epistle I ofsets his slippery denial anddeensive charge o plagiarism by touting Coleridges borrowed expression greenradiance rom MR. WORDSWORH, a Poet whose versication is occasion-ally harsh and whose diction too requently obscure: but whom I deem unrivaledamong the writers o the present day in manly sentiment, novel imagery, and vividcolouring.46 Although Coleridge ofers two major criticisms o this little-known

poet oDescriptive Sketches andAn Evening Walk, he also ranks Wordsworth in thevanguard o contemporary poets, which, according to Coleridges 1796 and 1797volumes, includes Lloyd, Lamb, Cottle, Coleridge and Southey.47

Southeys and Coleridges separate collections o poetry between 1796 and

1800 particularly publicize their collaborative work while also mimicking eachothers rearrangements o old with new texts. Southeys Preace toJoan o Arcnotes that the 450 lines at the beginning o the second book, were written byS.. Coleridge,48 while the last sentence o Coleridges 1796 Preace explainsthat the rst hal o Efusion XV. was written by the Author o Joan o Arc, anEpic Poem,49 and Southeys ootnote to Te Soldiers Wie in his 1797Poemspoints out that the third stanza was supplied by S. . Coleridge.50 Furthermore,like Coleridges 1796 Poems, whichhe excised, reorganized and supplementedin the 1797 volume, Southeys 1797 Poems stocked with headnotes and oot-notes was recongured in a second edition that also unctions as volume 1 ohis two-volumePoems by Robert Southey (1799). Wordsworth (with Coleridgesaid) urther inected Southeys revisionary and additive designs by reordering,

excising and expanding the 1798Lyrical Ballads into volume 1 o the 1800Lyri-cal Ballads with Other Poems. In wo Volumes. by W. Wordsworth.

On the heels o these three poets reciprocally accumulating collections opoetry, Walter Scott meticulously built up his poetic credentials inMinstrelsy othe Scottish Border(1802; our editions by 1810) and Te Lay o the Last Min-

strel(1805; eight editions by 1810). Te voluminous Introduction, appendices,ootnotes, headnotes and endnotes in Scotts two-volume 1802 publication style


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Moore, whose ootnotes dominate the volume, wryly claims that prose notesneed not reer to the indiferent verses above them. Instead, these notes cancommand a place within poetry publications that upstages and even supersedesthe poetic text. Poetry just might be the beast o burden that draws along, rom

page to page, the more practical and constructive prose lumber.However, Moores nal quotation rom Socrates suggests a potential irony

behind these seemingly strident observations. Te quotation can be translated aswhat is above us does not concern us, or as what is beyond our comprehensiondoes not concern us. While the rst translation echoes Moores statement that

prose notes have no need to pay servile deerence to the poetry looking downon them, the second translation suggests that poetry operates in a realm beyondthe ken o such prose. Even though the bulk o Moores commentary highlightsthe grounding and worldly practicality that prose can provide turning stupid

poetry to account this second possible translation reverses his argument andstations poetry at a height that prose can neither understand nor reach. Accordingto Moores shiy distinctions and upending o the top and bottom o the page,

prose notation can supplant, make use o, ignore and misconstrue poetry a seto possibilities that complicates the reception o poetic works by asking readers tomeasure the value o poetry with and against seemingly more matter-o-act typeso knowledge. In the midst o such slippery prose-poetry, primary-secondary divi-sions, Wordsworths poetic collections oreground a poet intent on developingthe preatory, concluding and marginal spaces in his books to oster paths o con-

nective reading through his volumes, relate individual poems to the whole o hispoetic project and lie, publicize and deend his poetry and establish an enduringplace in an emerging contemporary canon o British poets.

Critical Contexts

Moores comments in 1809 suggest that by the turn o the century prose noteswere an established subgenre in poetry publications, deployed and read nearlyas oen as prose preaces.53 Wordsworths Romantic reviewers and parodistsoen commented on his preaces and supplementary essays, and they took noteo the shiing paratextual and bibliographic orms in his poetic collections. Bycontrast, twentieth-century scholars have tended to ocus exclusively on therelationship between his prose essays and poetry. Consequently, a great dealo critical attention has been paid to Wordsworths (and Coleridges) Adver-tisement (1798), Preace to Lyrical Ballads(1800), revised Preace and theAppendix on Poetic Diction (1802), Preace and Essay Supplementary tothe Preace in the 1815 Poems, and his Essays Upon Epitaphs (1810/14).54 Asimilar Romantic/contemporary diferential exists over Wordsworths parodicreception. While parodic responses to Wordsworths publications signicantly


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Introduction 13

dened his public standing as a poet in the rst two decades o the nineteenthcentury, Romantic period scholars have tended to overlook or dismiss the sub-stantial insights in those literary parodies about how to read his poetry. Tesehistorically difering views about the signicance o Wordsworths paratexts andthe power o parody also point to a divide between how Wordsworths contem-

poraries and Romantic period scholars have evaluated his poetic reputation and what Andrew Franta has recently dubbed his audience problem.55

Part o why Wordsworths paratexts have been neglected stems rom the long-standing view that, in the second decade o the nineteenth century, the qualityo Wordsworths poetry declined in direct relation to his increasing roles as hisown best editor and critic.56 Tis argument about Wordsworths anti-climax alsodovetails with Matthew Arnolds contention that Wordsworth needed a goodeditor (like Arnold).57 While scholars since M. H. Abrams Te Mirror and the

Lamp (1953) have routinely treated Wordsworths prose essays as maniestosthat theorize about how to read his poetry, many o these same critics underplay,udge or lament how these essays do not consistently provide a practical guide orhow to read individual poems.58 Wordsworths Romantic reviewers and parodistshad similar complaints, but they also commented (both seriously and derisively)on how, in his published books o poetry, Wordsworth attempted to bridge the

potential gap between prose theory and poetic practice by intertwining his poemswith interpretive, contextual and connective prose notation.59

A second lingering assumption, which relates Wordsworths value as a poet

to his perceived habits o oral composition, has urther contributed to Roman-tic period scholars overlooking Wordsworths paratexts. As Andrew Bennettmaintains in Wordsworth Writing(2007),a long tradition o twentieth-centuryscholarship typied by James Chandlers contention in Wordsworths Second

Nature (1984) that Wordsworth preers speech rather than writing has por-trayed Wordsworth as a poet who did not like writing and who only producedinspired and, thereore, authentic poetry while walking outdoors and compos-ing aloud.60 From this perspective, Wordsworths editorial work, process orevision, organization o poetic volumes and paratexts are separate rom and sec-ondary to authentic composition. Bennett careully debunks this conception o

Wordsworth as a poet who did not oen write and ofers an insightul analysiso how the physical process o writing inormed Wordsworths poetic identity,

choice o subject matter and passion or poetry. Bennetts argument provides amethod or rethinking the signicance o Wordsworths writings and rewritingsand an impetus to re-examine why and how Wordsworth collected together and

published his poetry.Paul Magnusons Reading Public Romanticism (1998) ofers a broader cul-

tural horizon or theorizing about the signicance o supplementary writings byRomantic poets. His book examines the precise location o several canonical,


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Romantic texts by reading the rames in which those texts were originally pub-lished.61 Beyond isolating particular versions and publication histories o a text,Magnuson pays close attention to how Romantic paratexts oen act as entrance-

ways into and exits rom a particular text towards a variety o public discourses whether aesthetic, political, nationalistic or sexual. Magnusons arguments shithe terms o how scholars might engage with long-established histories o pub-lished poems in the Romantic period. However, his eforts to situate a poem or acollection o poetry are oen limited to an analysis o one or two paratexts. Tisstudy builds on Magnusons contention that Romantic texts must be exploredcareully in relation to their very public paratextual rames, and urther maintainsthe necessity o examining the numerous supplementary writings that appear in

publications by poets such as Wordsworth. Tese writings need to be locatedand analysed in relation to each other, as well as in relation to the texts that theysupplement, and in relation to the eld o texts within which they are placed. 62From this methodological perspective, Wordsworths supplementary writings notonly dene his brand o poetry and situate that poetry within particular culturaldebates; they also create or readers specic kinds o textual and cultural travellingthrough the past, present and uture orms o his poetic collections.

Te relative lack o sustained scholarly interest in Wordsworths para-texts has been mirrored by the treatment o his parodic reception.63 Although

Wordsworth was one o the most parodied poets in what has long been reerredto as the Golden Age o Parody, parody holds a marginal place in Wordsworth

studies.64

In Te Vile Art o Romantic Parody, Graeme Stones attributes thisdisregard to the myth that Wordsworth and parody are two separate and hos-tile entities.65 Coupled with Wordsworths twentieth-century position as thetouchstone or British Romanticism, this myth grounded on Wordsworthsown disparaging prose remarks about parody has drawn attention away romhow parody shaped early nineteenth-century debates about authorship, read-ing and reviewing.66 Tough a resurgent interest in Romantic period parody hasbegun over the last two decades,67 parody is either conspicuously absent or playsonly a minor role in recent books about the vexed relationship between writersand readers during the Romantic period,68 and with similar studies ocused on

Wordsworth, this type o omission has been even more prevalent.69

In the rst two decades o the nineteenth century, Wordsworths reputation

and readership were largely a unction o the parodic ramings and reramings ohis multi-voiced poems, shiing registers and supplementary prose.70 As Mark

Jones recalls, Wordsworths intermingling voices have been treated uneasily bycritics since Francis Jefrey in the Edinburgh Review (1802) and S. . Coleridgein the Biographia Literaria (1817) who saw Wordsworths multi-vocality both

within and between his poetry and prose as latently parodic orms that inviteurther parody. Joness Bakhtinian engagement with parody pits later nine-


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Introduction 15

teenth- and twentieth-century parody anthologies, which relegate parody to asingular and contained orm o criticism, against how irreducible the contradic-tion is between Wordsworths parodic practice and his explicit critical antipathyto parody.71 Trough multi-aceted parody, Wordsworths early critics and imi-tators ound a means o representing, reraming and replying to the many voicesin his poetic collections. By contrast, subsequent criticism o Wordsworths

poetry that mimics his critical antipathy to parody tends to classiy parodieso Wordsworth as parasitic and inconsequential orms. While such a practicemay deend Wordsworth against his detractors, it runs the risk o attening

Wordsworths dynamic engagements with his contemporary readers and, as aconsequence, o misreading his variegated poetry and prose voices as either aunied authoritative perspective or a solely deensive practice.72

Wordsworths supplementary writings and parodic reception were enmeshedin a wide-spread struggle between early nineteenth-century authors, reviewersand publishers to negotiate and create the tastes o contemporary readers.73Contrary to the critical thought established by Abrams and strengthened by

Jon Klancher that by 1815 Wordsworth was writing or the people philosophi-cally characterized and not or his contemporaries, Wordsworths increasinglycomplex, paratextual network and position as a parodic avourite reveal howintertwined his writings were with reader responses in the rst two decades othe nineteenth century. During this period, Wordsworths publications met withnumerous literary parodies that critiqued his subject matter, poetic diction, uses

o genres, political inclinations and choice o poetic associates. Nicola rott hasably demonstrated how many o Wordsworths reviewers in the rst two dec-ades o the nineteenth century contributed to Wordsworths parodic treatmentby drawing attention to Wordsworths hopes that readers would have a sincereemotional response to his poems while also sarcastically pointing out how manyo his poems sabotage his supposed purpose and read instead like sel-parody. 74

Wordsworths supplementary writings were at the oreront o this critique,and many o Wordsworths parodists attempted to overwrite his aesthetic andcultural claims o authority by reconguring the very supplementary writingsthat called or these sympathetic responses. A signicant part o parodying

Wordsworth meant reproducing his poetic system verse and prose in orderto obuscate the line between parodic ridicule and complementary pastiche. Te

best kind o Wordsworth parody meaning the most popular le readersunable to determine whether it was written in earnest or in jest, or i it was writ-ten by Wordsworth or someone else.

Satirical parodies o Wordsworth also ofer a means or examining how authorssuch as Wordsworth were written into or out o particular literary markets andideological rameworks. In his edited collection, Te Satiric Eye: Forms o Satirein the Romantic Period(2003), Steven Jones points out how satire rom 1780 to


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1832 challenged emerging orms o what Jerome McGann has called the Roman-tic Ideology. Romantic period satire oen undercut developing myths o naturalcreativity, emotional sincerity and aesthetic sublimity, and, as a ew scholars havedemonstrated, several orms o satire rose to public prominence in direct responseto the growing popularity o this Romantic sensibility.75 Around the turn o thecentury, satire might be attached to the Whiggish ideology represented by the

Edinburgh Review (1802); to ory reviewing engines such as the short-lived Anti-Jacobin (17978),Quarterly Review (1809), Satirist(180714) andBlackwoodsEdinburgh Magazine (1817); or to more radical publications such as WilliamCobbettsPolitical Register(1802)and John and Leigh Hunts Examiner(1808).76Regardless o political a liation, during this age o periodical satire, parody wasa pliable critical and literary orm used to disarm unsavoury publications byrewriting authorial tones, rearranging literary orms, burlesquing language and,consequently, divesting authors o public credibility and possibly o sales as well.

rott demonstrates that the ascendance o Romantic parody correspondedwith and oen mimicked journalistic criticism, particularly in the EdinburghReview.77 She maintains that this process led to the creation o a new school ocriticism intent on dening itsel against and controlling what they perceived tobe the poetic programme o writers such as Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey the new school o poetry. In the midst o this prose onslaught, Wordsworthsreviewing critics and parodists singled out his poetry and supplementary writ-ings as a means o debating the value and place o new types o literature, as well

as what and how readers should read. While Wordsworth endeavoured to shapethe trajectory o his career through his supplementary prose, reviewers and paro-dists attempted to mould those writings towards other ends by reraming them

with their own political and aesthetic conceptions o literature. In the midst othis struggle, Wordsworth, his reviewing critics and parodists alternately alignedand pitted against one another the seemingly transcendent power o poetry andthe corrective necessity o prose.

As a poet dependent on and constantly rustrated by the sales o his collec-tions in the rst two decades o the nineteenth century, Wordsworth could notaford to ignore parodic responses because they both damaged and highlightedhow readers might grasp the particular qualities o his poetic collections.78 Out-side the eedback rom his coterie circle o amily and riends centred in the Lake

District, Wordsworth could only hypothesize about how the rapidly expandingand diverse reading public was receiving his poetry by assessing reviews, liter-ary parodies and imitations that represented and interpreted his publications orreaders who had read, had yet to read, or, more likely, would not read his collec-tions. As Lucy Newlyns work has made abundantly clear, many o Wordsworthscontemporaries shared this anxiety o reception. However, most authors did notexpress these concerns as directly or as conrontationally as Wordsworth did.


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Introduction 17

Particularly in his 1815 Preace and Essay Supplementary, Wordsworths irri-tation can be attributed, in part, to his antipathy to antagonistic reviews and

parodies, but these recurring rustrations also represent his desire and inabilityto distil the responses o contemporary readers rom those sources.79

From the 1800 Preace to the Preace and Essay Supplementary in his 1815Poems, Wordsworths prose essays and other supplementary writings increasinglycall attention to the necessity and di culties o cultivating active rather than

passive responses to his poetry. Tis enduring concern probably stems as muchrom his paradoxical views on reading his poetry as it does rom his attempts toguard his poetry against criticism. Although many o Wordsworths supplemen-tary writings prescribe how to read his poetry, in some o the very same writings,he encourages readers to develop and exercise their own active reading strate-gies.80 Wordsworth was convinced that his readers should ollow his editorialdirections, but he was also well-aware that many o his readers would exercisetheir own reading habits on his poems. His statement in the 1800 Preace thatin some instances eelings even o the ludicrous may be given to my Readersby expressions which appeared to me tender and pathetic, demonstrates hisdeep and abiding concern that his choice o poetic language and style wouldbe mocked.81 Tose pre-established codes o decision, which Wordsworth andColeridge single out in the 1798 Advertisement toLyrical Ballads, were di -cult to change, and Wordsworth did not simply expect readers to adopt his views

passively without question. On the contrary, he created rhetorical and biblio-

graphic spaces beore, within, between and aer his poems or readers to reecton and respond to his poetry.82 Many o Wordsworths contemporary readers didrespond to his eforts to elicit a corresponding power that would intermingle

with his poetic collections. However, they oen responded unsympathetically as Wordsworth suspected they might with the satirical power o parody.83

Satirical parodies such as Richard Mants Te Simpliciad(1808) and J. H. Reyn-oldss Peter Bell (1819) provide incisive criticism into how Wordsworth styledhimsel through the bibliographical setup o his books o poetry as a poet,critic, editor, anthologist and cultural icon. Tese parodists sought to retard andrender ridiculous the relationship between Wordsworths supplementary proseand poetry. Tis satirical attention brought Wordsworths poetry to a broaderaudience, and, in the cases o Mant and Reynolds, subversively demonstrated the

very kind o active, readerly work that Wordsworth calls or in his supplementarywritings. Teir attempts to derange how readers might interpret Wordsworthspoems and progress through his volumes ironically ofer rich models or how toreread his poetic collections. Tese parodies also highlight the degree to which

Wordsworths unsettled prose-poetry articulations were implicated in early nine-teenth-century debates about the cultural importance o poetry and the collective

work that poetry demands rom a growing nation o readers.


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Overview

Chapter 1 sis the paratextual exchanges, reviewing practices and parodic recon-gurations that inuenced Wordsworths transormation o the single-volume1798 Lyrical Ballads into a two-volume second edition. . J. Mathiass Te

Pursuits o Literature (17948) and the Anti-Jacobin (17978) inaugurated areviewing method that marked Wordsworths early entanglements with parodyand supplementary prose while Robert Southeys negative review oLyrical Bal-lads led Wordsworth to develop prose endnotes that both pregure the 1800Preace and anchor his other more local supplementary prose in the volumes.

Chapter 2 examines more broadly Wordsworths use o supplementary prose

to reconstitute the anonymous 1798 volume as a new two-volume work dis-tinctly written and organized by William Wordsworth. Tis edition responds tothe reading publics tastes or ballad collections, poetry anthologies, picturesque

poetry and prose tours through the English Lake District, and takes readers othe 1800 volumes on a literal, metaphorical and afective journey through thishighly travelled area o northern England. While the notes he includes in thesecond edition comment on the geographical terrain, customs and people o theLake District, they primarily serve as directions on how to travel through hiscollection o poetry. In attempting to market his own brand o pastoral poetry,

Wordsworth acts as a textual and cultural guide, who styles the 1800 editionas a revisionary collection that intertwines the uture growth and stature o his

poetry with how readers progress through and reread his poetic language.

Chapter 3 situates the publication o Wordsworths 1807 Poemswithin themocking responses o parodists and reviewing critics. Richard Mants parody o

Wordsworths 1807Poems in Te Simpliciad(1808) reveals the extent to whichWordsworths new volumes threatened the review cultures ability to dene thecriteria or public conversation about the nature and value o poetry. Reect-ing reviewers general dismay over Wordsworths new volumes, Mants parody isbiurcated between satirical-didactic couplets a patchwork o poetic lines madeup largely o Wordsworths 1807 Poems and ootnotes a wide selection o

poetic passages also taken primarily rom Wordsworths 1807Poems. Te Simpli-ciaddraws attention to how various poems in the 1807 volumes are purportedlyconnected to one another, and it distorts how Wordsworths network o proseendnotes and ootnotes, poem titles and section headings attempt to acilitateconnective paths o reading. Trough its prose-poetry juxtapositions and deor-mations, Te Simpliciadpresents Wordsworths poetic language as a parodic echoo itsel, which short-circuits the sympathetic engagement and hermeneutic activ-ity that the supplementary writings in his 1807 volumes encourage.

Despite enduring numerous and severe critical whippings rom the pressover his 1807Poems, in 1814 and 1815 Wordsworth reengaged with his critics


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Introduction 19

and the reading public armed with paratexts that outline the purpose and designo his past, present and uture poems. Seeking to re-enter a book-lled market,

Wordsworth attempted to capitalize on and direct the bibliomania sweepingBritain by developing his own anecdotal method o bibliographic organization.His network o supplementary writings attempts to separate his volumes rom asaturated poetry market by placing them within an imagined coherent whole amini-library that unites his poems, presents a unied story o his poetic develop-ment and reveals a connection between the past, present and uture cultural lieo the nation. Trough supplementary writings, in prose and verse, Wordsworth

presents himsel as a disinterested man o letters and recasts the values behindthis bibliomania by recreating or and including his readers in the process o pro-ducing and collecting his poetry. Chapter 4 also demonstrates how, in one o his1815 categories Poems o the Imagination, Wordsworths prose notes describehis works as a modern classic, t to be collected together and then re-collectedby the public. Tese notes suggest how readers can gain control over the sheermass o printed materials that they encounter, and they also identiy LinesComposed a Few Miles above intern Abbey, the nal poem in this category, asa composite orm that has arisen not only out o the poets developmental tale oimaginative growth but also out o the growth o a nation.

Chapter 5 ocuses on the satirical letter rom a Friend in chapter 13 othe Biographia Literaria and examines why Coleridges Friend appropriates

Wordsworths Gothic church metaphor rom his Preace to Te Excursion

the supplementary guration that Wordsworth used to assert the unity o allhis literary productions. Te letter recongures the purpose o WordsworthsGothic church in order to reveal, by contrast, several allusive pathways thatencourage Coleridges attentive readers to move reely between his discursive

prose and poetic compositions. Unlike the seemingly autonomous Wordsworth,whose prose maniestos and notes to his poems oen attempt to direct publicopinion by orchestrating particular rameworks within which to read his poems,the Friend demonstrates how Coleridges readers have oen appropriated and

will continue to appropriate his poetry and created the rameworks in whichthose poems might be read. Coleridge shadows Wordsworths Gothic church

with his own newly published Sibylline Leaves, and the Friend provides read-ers with a humorously parodic opportunity to recollect and re-authorize the

nations recent literary heritage.Coleridge was not the only poet-critic who responded satirically to

Wordsworths system or organizing his lies work. Several o WordsworthsRegency parodists attempted to exploit and poke un at his continued efortsto dene a poetic contract, ounded on the seemingly inviolable labour o the

Wordsworthian poet and sanctied by the corresponding labour o the willingand able reader. Chapter 6 examines how J. H. Reynoldss Peter Bell (1819)


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satirizes the Wordsworthian poet, who sings the praises o his own imaginativelabour in the Preace and Essay Supplementary to the Preace, which book-end volume 1 o his 1815 Poems. Bracketing his Peter Bell, Reynoldss ownmock-essays, which ridicule Wordsworths 1815 maniestos, are underwritten by

parodies o Wordsworths prose notes to his 1807 and 1815 volumes o poetry. Inthese notes, Reynolds seizes on the editorial persona in Wordsworths ootnotes,

who pufs Wordsworths poetic reputation and compulsively points backwardsto his other poems and prose notes as unchallengeable reerence points thatsolidiy his present statements. In Reynoldss Peter Bell, one Wordsworth poemsatirically builds on another so that every word or image rom a poem triggers amock-Wordsworthian response, which obsessively reers to another o his poems

where that word was previously used. Seemingly lost in an insular world o hisown creation, Wordsworth, Reynolds suggests, simply cannot help but reer tohis earlier selves and idiosyncratic canon o poetry.

Te nal chapter probes how Wordsworths River Duddon volume (1820)counters and absorbs this well-worn, parodic narrative o Wordsworth as an idi-osyncratic and simple poet o the Lake District. Te Duddonvolume appearedin the midst oBlackwoods Edinburgh Magazines celebratory, nationalisticand newly parodic treatment o Wordsworths character and poetry. TroughtheDuddonvolume, Wordsworth engendered a narrative o his literary lie andnational value that ofset these portrayals and which many reviewers in 1820began to credit and echo. Te miscellaneous arrangement o the volume brings

together sonnets (a genre that he was rarely criticized or using), extensive prosenotes to those sonnets, narrative and lyric poems, and a lengthy prose opograph-ical Description o the Country o the Lakes all o which position Wordsworths

poetry and prose as a cultural supplement to be revered because o his uniquelysituated place in the Lake District. TeRiver Duddon volume asserts this regionas the moral seat o Britain and identies Wordsworth as a guiding national poet,

whose combination o poetry and prose speaks or an ideal British characterarticulated through his vision o the river Duddon. Concluded by our pages oadvertisements or scientic, philosophical and agricultural books, the volumeinects numerous contemporary discourses about Britains natural treasures and

points the London print market and its readers to the origins o Wordsworthspoetry and the oundation o the nations present identity the Lake District.

Documents

Introduction From Wordsworth's Poetic Collections