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Penguin Classics presents Selected Poems written by William Wordsworth. Summary of the Book This volume brings together a rich selection from the most creative period of Wordsworth’s life - from Tintern Abbey, an ode on the healing powers of nature written during his intense friendship with Coleridge, to extracts from his epic autobiographical poem, The Prelude. Also included are his sought after short works like: I wandered as lonely as a Cloud, Composed upon Westminster Bridge, and the moving Lucy Gray. This inaugural volume in the new program of selected poetry particularly commissioned for Penguin Classics includes a chronology, suggestions for further reading, explanatory notes, and an index of titles and first lines. In his introduction, Wordsworth’s biographer Stephen Gill describes the personal and political events that shaped Wordsworth’s career and examines the major themes that run through his work. About William Wordsworth William Wordsworth was one of the foremost English Romantic poets. He was much influenced by the events of the French Revolution in his youth, and he intentionally broke away from the artificial expression of the Augustan and neo-classical convention of the eighteenth century. He wrote in the language of ordinary men and women, of mundane thoughts, sights and sounds, and his early poetry represents this fresh approach to his art of making the ordinary seem a perpetual unravelling of wonder and mystery. Wordsworth’s remarkable autobiographical poem, The Prelude, was completed in the year 1805, but was not published until after his death. It is included in this full edition of Wordsworth's poetry.