Editing William Wordsworth (section)

== Early career == 
===First publication and ''Lyrical Ballads''=== 
{{Quote box |width=250px |align=left |quoted=true |bgcolor=#FFFFF0 |salign=right
 |quote =<poem>
'''''[[We Are Seven]]'''''

I met a little cottage girl:
   She was eight years old, she said;
Her hair was thick with many a curl
   That clustered round her head.

She had a rustic, woodland air,
   And she was wildly clad;
Her eyes were fair, and very fair; - 
   Her beauty made me glad.

“Sisters and brothers, little maid,
   How many may you be?”
“How many? Seven in all,” she said,
   And wondering looked at me.

“And where are they? I pray you tell.”
   She answered, “Seven are we;
And two of us at Conway dwell,
   And two are gone to sea;

“Two of us in the churchyard lie,
   My sister and my brother;
And, in the churchyard cottage, I
   Dwell near them with my mother.” 

“My stockings there I often knit;
   My kerchief there I hem;
And there upon the ground I sit,
   And sing a song to them.

“And often after sunset, sir,
   When it is light and fair,
I take my little porringer,
   And eat my supper there. 

“How many are you, then,” said I,
   “If they two are in heaven?”
Quick was the little maid’s reply:
   “O Master! we are seven.”

“But they are dead; those two are dead!
   Their spirits are in heaven!” - 
’T was throwing words away; for still
The little maid would have her will,
   And said, “Nay, we are seven!”</poem>|source =From the ''"We Are Seven"'' poem<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=kXd4bRr71a4C&dq=A+Library+of+Poetry+and+Song%3A+Being+Choice+Selections+from+the+Best+Poets+William+Wordsworth+england&pg=PA14 ''A Library of Poetry and Song: Being Choice Selections from The Best Poets. With An Introduction by William Cullen Bryant''], New York, J.B. Ford and Company, 1871, pp. 14-15.</ref>}}

[[File:William Wordsworth at 28 by William Shuter2.jpg|thumb|right|Wordsworth in 1798, about the time he began ''[[The Prelude]]''.<ref>"[http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/collections/wordsworth.html The Cornell Wordsworth Collection]". [[Cornell University]]. Retrieved 13 February 2009.</ref>]] The year 1793 saw the first publication of poems by Wordsworth in the collections ''An Evening Walk'' and ''Descriptive Sketches''. In 1795, he received a legacy of £900 from [[Raisley Calvert]] and was able to pursue a career as a poet.

It was also in 1795 that he met [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge]] in Somerset. The two poets quickly developed a close friendship. For two years from 1795, William and his sister Dorothy lived at Racedown House in Dorset—a property of the Pinney family—to the west of [[Pilsdon Pen]]. They walked in the area for about two hours daily, and the nearby hills consoled Dorothy as she pined for the fells of her native Lakeland. She wrote,
<blockquote>"We have hills which, seen from a distance, almost take the character of mountains, some cultivated nearly to their summits, others in their wild state covered with [[Ulex|furze]] and broom. These delight me the most as they remind me of our native wilds."<ref>{{cite book|title=Dorset Villages|author=Roland Gant|publisher=Robert Hale Ltd|pages=111–112|year=1980|isbn=0-7091-8135-3}}</ref></blockquote>

In 1797, the pair moved to [[Alfoxton House]], Somerset, just a few miles away from Coleridge's home in [[Nether Stowey]]. Together Wordsworth and Coleridge (with insights from Dorothy) produced ''[[Lyrical Ballads]]'' (1798), an important work in the English [[Romanticism|Romantic movement]].<ref>{{Cite book |year=1798 |title=Lyricall Ballads: With a Few Other Poems |edition=1 |publisher= J. & A. Arch |publication-date=1798 |location=London |url= https://archive.org/details/lyricalballadswi00word |access-date=13 November 2014 }} via archive.org</ref> The volume gave neither Wordsworth's nor Coleridge's name as author. One of Wordsworth's most famous poems, "[[Tintern Abbey (poem)|Tintern Abbey]]", was published in this collection, along with Coleridge's "[[The Rime of the Ancient Mariner]]". The second edition, published in 1800, had only Wordsworth listed as the author and included a preface to the poems.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Wordsworth |first= William |year=1800 |title=Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems |edition=2 |publisher= Printed for T.N. Longman and O. Rees |publication-date=1800 |location=London |volume= I |url=https://archive.org/details/lyricalballadswi04word |access-date=13 November 2014 }}; {{Cite book |last=Wordsworth |first= William |year=1800 |title=Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems |edition=2 |publisher= Printed for T.N. Longman and O. Rees |publication-date=1800 |location=London |volume= II |url=https://archive.org/details/lyricalballadswi03word |access-date=13 November 2014 }} via archive.org</ref> It was augmented significantly in the next edition, published in 1802.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Wordsworth |first= William |year=1802 |title=Lyrical Ballads with Pastoral and other Poems |edition=3 |publisher= Printed for T.N. Longman and O. Rees |publication-date=1802 |location=London |volume= I |url=https://archive.org/details/lyricalballadsw01colegoog |access-date=13 November 2014 }} via archive.org.</ref> In this preface, which some scholars consider a central work of Romantic literary theory, Wordsworth discusses what he sees as the elements of a new type of verse, one that is based on the ordinary language "really used by men" while avoiding the poetic diction of much 18th-century verse. Wordsworth also gives his famous definition of poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility", and calls his own poems in the book "experimental". A fourth and final edition of ''Lyrical Ballads'' was published in 1805.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Wordsworth |first= William |year=1805 |title=Lyrical Ballads with Pastoral and other Poems |edition=4 |publisher=Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, by R. Taylor |publication-date=1805 |location=London |volume= I |url=https://archive.org/details/lyricalballadsi00neilgoog |access-date=13 November 2014 }} via archive.org.</ref>

===''The Borderers''===
Between 1795 and 1797, Wordsworth wrote his only play, ''The Borderers'', a verse tragedy set during the reign of [[Henry III of England|King Henry III of England]], when Englishmen in the North Country came into conflict with Scottish [[border reivers]]. He attempted to get the play staged in November 1797. However, it was rejected by [[Thomas Harris (theatre manager)|Thomas Harris]], the manager of the [[Covent Garden Theatre]], who proclaimed it "impossible that the play should succeed in the representation". The rebuff was not received lightly by Wordsworth, and the play was not published until 1842, after substantial revisions.<ref>Stephen Gill, ''William Wordsworth: A Life'', [[Oxford University Press]], 1989, pp. 132–133.</ref>