Wordsworth

Duncan Wu is a Fellow of St Catherine's College, Oxford, and University Lecturer in English Literature. His numerous publications include A Companion to Romanticism (1998), Romanticism: An Anthology with CD-ROM, (Second Edition, 1998), Romanticism: A Critical Reader (1995), Romantic Women Poets: An Anthology (1997), an edition of William Wordsworth's The Five-Book Prelude (1997) and of William Hazlitt's The Plain-Speaker: Key Essays (1998), all available from Blackwell. He is also the editor of a nine volume edition of The Selected Writings of William Hazlitt (1998).

• List of Illustrations viiPreface viiiAcknowledgments xiiA Note on Texts xivAbbreviations xv1 ‘Perhaps my pains might be beguil’d 12 ‘In black Helvellyn’s inmost womb’ 203 ‘Charg’d by magic’ 434 ‘The world is poisoned at the heart’ 695 ‘Their life is hidden with God’ 886 ‘The vital spirit of a perfect form’ 118Part I: October 1798-April 1799 118Between Parts I and II: April-May 1799 134Part II: May-December 1799 1467 ‘Serious musing and self-reproach’ 1678 ‘I yearn towards some philosophic song’ 1899 ‘That vast Abiding-place’ 21010 ‘I only look’d for pain and grief’ 23111 ‘Forbearance & self-sacrifice’ 25712 ‘O teach me calm submission to thy will’ 275Epilogue 303Appendix: The White Doe of Rylstone (1808 Text) and it’s ‘Advertizement’ 316Bibliography 347Index 361

"A major achievement. A marvellous combination of profound scholarship and equally profound speculative insight." Professor Stephen Gill, Oxford University "Wordsworth: An Inner Life shows that it is still possible to say new things about a life and a literary oeuvre which might seem, in outline, all too familiar." Times Literary Supplement "This is traditional scholarship at its best, attentive to detail and immersed in a welter of poetic sources, which will no doubt be studied and absorbed by bright graduate students and Wordsworth experts." Times Higher Education Supplement "In his reconstruction of Wordsworth's "inner life", Wu offers a compelling blend of biography and literary criticism." Religious Studies Review