The Late Poetry of the Lake Poets Romanticism Revised

The long-established association of Romanticism with youth has resulted in the early poems of the Lake Poets being considered the most significant. Tim Fulford challenges the tendency to overlook the later poetry of no longer youthful poets, which has had the result of neglecting the Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey of the 1820s and leaving unexamined the three poets' rise to popularity in the 1830s and 1840s. He offers a fresh perspective on the Lake Poets as professional writers shaping long careers through new work, as well as the republication of their early successes. The theme of lateness, incorporating revision, recollection, age and loss, is examined within contexts including gender, visual art, and the commercial book market. Fulford investigates the Lake Poets' later poems for their impact now, while also exploring their historical effects in their own time and counting the costs of their omission from Romanticism.

Introduction; Part I. Southey: 1. The Lake Poets and the picturesque view: the visual turn in the late Southey; 2. Poetic hells and pacific edens: Southey's Tale of Paraguay and Byron's The Island; Part II. Coleridge: 3. Print and performance: Christabel: Kubla Khan, A Vision; The Pains of Sleep; 4. The language of love in the late Coleridge: annual verse and collected poetry; Part III. Wordsworth: 5. Naming the abyss: Wordsworth and the sound of power; 6. Picturing the prehistoric: Wordsworth's sightseeing.

Tim Fulford is a Professor of English at De Montfort University, Leicester. He has published widely on Romantic and eighteenth-century literature and culture. He is editor of The Banks of Wye: A Critical Edition (2012) and co-editor of Robert Southey: Later Poetical Works, 1811–1838 (2012).