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3 - Short-Circuiting Wordsworth's 1807 Poems: Richard Mant's The Simpliciad

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Summary

As neither preface, address, or advertisement informs us why these poems are published, we are unable to inform our readers of the author's design in so doing.

nor can any thing give us a more melancholy view of the debasing effects of this miserable theory, than that it has given ordinary men a right to wonder at the folly and presumption of a man gifted like Mr. Wordsworth, and made him appear, in his second avowed publication, like a bad imitator of the worst of his former productions.

Turn to the ‘Moods of my own Mind’ [in the 1807 Poems]. There is scarcely a Poem here above thirty Lines, and very trifling these poems will appear to many; but, omitting to speak of them individually, do they not, taken collectively, fix the attention upon a subject eminently poetical …?

Neither Wordsworth nor his publisher Longman could have predicted the surge of negative publicity that erupted from the review culture, the reading public, contemporary authors and parodists over the publication of his 1807 Poems, in Two Volumes. Before the 1807 volumes, Wordsworth's four editions of Lyrical Ballads had received more positive than negative reviews, his poetry was discussed frequently by reviewing critics and his brand of poetry was slowly becoming a recognizable literary commodity. To Wordsworth and his publisher, the reading public seemed primed for a new and original edition of his poems. The 1807 volumes, however, neither achieved the market share, nor received the kind of sympathetic readings that Wordsworth expected. As sales languished, reviewers criticized his new poems for four related reasons.

First, many reviewers wondered why Wordsworth had not introduced the 1807 Poems with a preface that explained the poetic principles and purpose governing his poems.

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Publisher: Pickering & Chatto
First published in: 2014

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