Introduction

Summary

The “Introduction” first challenges conventional notions of influence which construct Wordsworth as a “father” to the younger poets, Keats, Shelley, and Byron. It lays out a model of mutual influence, in which Wordsworth’s post-Waterloo poetry is found to develop in a conversation with his younger contemporaries. It then establishes the intricate personal and poetic ties between Wordsworth and the “second-generation” romantics, recreating Wordsworth’s place in the post-Waterloo literary scene and how it was shaped by the developing struggle between the Lake and Cockney Schools. Our failure to understand how Wordsworth connects with “second-generation” romanticism has distorted models of his later career and created the critical commonplace of the aesthetic failure of “late” Wordsworth. The “Introduction” also supplies an overview of scholarship to date on the later Wordsworth.