LSIT OF ILLUSTRATIONS LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS FORWORD ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS INTRODUCTION PART ONE:HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 1 Biographical summaries Chronological table The Prelude as autobiography Education Political experience and change of attitude Dorothy Wordsworth and her Journals Collaboration with Coleridge Appearance and character 2 Economic history The Industrial Revolution Agrarian distress The Lake District Wordsworthe's concern for the Poor,the displaced and the beggars The older Wordsworth 3 Philosophy and religion Locke and the sense of sight Rousseau and the education of the sensibility Godwin,the philosophical anarchist Hartley and the association of ideas Wordsworth's ‘Creed’1978-1805 Return to the Anglican Church PART TWO:CRITICAL SURVEY Early poems,1784-1793 An Evening Walk Revolutionary Wordsworth,1793-1798 Lyrical Ballads The Last of the Flock Cermany,1798-1799 The Two April Mornings The decision to go home,1799 Harl-Leap Well A poet in retirement Alice Fell On tour Stepping Westward How to read The Prelude From The Prelude ‘The set is now broken’,1805 Elegiac Stanzas The Excursion Surprised by Joy Victorian precursor The Primrose of the Rock Is the Later poetry so bad? PART THREE:REFERENCE SECTION Wordsworth and his circle A Wordsworth Gazetteer Further Reading General Index