Wordsworth's poetic reputation was severely damaged by the mocking criticisms levelled at his 1807 Poems, and sales of these volumes languished over the next few years. Wordsworth did not publish another collection of poems until 1815. And, before hazarding the publication of such a collection, he carefully advertised its lasting cultural significance and massive size in a ‘Preface’ and ‘Prospectus’ to his epic, philosophical poem The Excursion(1814). Through his 1814 and 1815 publications, Wordsworth sought to prove his critics wrong, demonstrate the high sincerity of his poetic project, establish a market share for his poetry and direct the bibliomania affecting the reading public in Great Britain.

Philip Connell argues that the 1810s saw the rise of diverse strains of bibliomania involving the aristocratic gentleman, the burgeoning reading public and the man of letters. Citing the famous sale of the great library of the fifth duke of Roxburghe, James Innes-Ker, Connell relates the aristocratic vogue for purchasing and collecting expensive literary treasures to a larger public interest in assembling the nation's literary heritage. In the early nineteenth century, an aristocratic bibliomaniac might be understood publicly either as a self-absorbed collector, gratifying an insatiable desire for collecting rare and valuable books, or as a benefactor to society, accumulating a library of books that would add to the cultural capital of the nation. Connell suggests that this latter view developed largely in the late eighteenth century in conjunction with the reading public's broadening interest in collecting the literary past – a pursuit made economically possible with the end of perpetual copyright in 1774. Such widespread interest led to cheap and expensive editions of literary classics and to a concern with establishing and collecting together the literary heritage of Great Britain. With this vogue for book collecting, Connell maintains that even an aristocrat's private library could be understood, ‘symbolically at least, as a national resource’.