Home Books Radical Wordsworth: The Poet Who Changed the World

Radical Wordsworth: The Poet Who Changed the World

Radical Wordsworth: The Poet Who Changed the World

by Jonathan Bate

Yale University Press ·2020 ·608 pages ·History
Academic Press
Near the Top
Near the Top
I Index
56/99
Near the Top

72/99

Critics

Maybe Someday

39/99

Readers

n/a

Scholars

51/99

Rating

92/99

Volume

65/99

Rating

13/99

Volume

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About This Book

On the 250th anniversary of Wordsworth's birth comes a highly imaginative and vivid portrait of a revolutionary poet who embodied the spirit of his age Published in time for the 250th anniversary of William Wordsworth's birth, this is the biography of a great poetic genius, a revolutionary who changed the world. Wordsworth rejoiced in the French Revolution and played a central role in the cultural upheaval that we call the Romantic Revolution. He and his fellow Romantics changed forever the way we think about childhood, the sense of the self, our connection to the natural environment, and the purpose of poetry. But his was also a revolutionary life in the old sense of the word, insofar as his art was of memory, the return of the past, the circling back to childhood and youth. This beautifully written biography is purposefully fragmentary, momentary, and selective, opening up what Wordsworth called "the hiding-places of my power."


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Reviews

"And he has succeeded in writing it ..."

The Spectator (UK) Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"Bate is excellent on how Wordsworth forged a blank verse that shed its grand Miltonic subject matter while taking advantage of the form's capacity for suppleness and intimacy ..."

Kathryn Hughes· New York Review of Books Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"This is a narrative that celebrates the fact that our lives are marked by turning points ..."

Rachel Cooke· The Guardian Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"Radical Wordsworth...deserves to take its place as the finest modern introduction to his work, life and impact ..."

Boyd Tonkin· Financial Times Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"The radicalism most interesting to modern readers is Wordsworth's pioneering exploration of the self—Bate makes repeated comparisons to Freud."

James Marriott· The Times (UK) Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"Bracingly candid about the superiority of Wordsworth's early output to his later work ..."

Publishers Weekly Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

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