Lyrical Ballads (The 100 Greatest Books of All Time)

The Lyrical Ballads were first published in 1798 and consisted of a compilation of poems by Romantic Poets William Wordsworth, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The collection was an enormously important contribution to the world of literature both in its entirety, as well as by virtue of the individual poems that it contained - such works as Coleridge's Rime Of The Ancient Mariner and Wordsworth's 'Tintern Abbey'. But despite the quality and popularity of the poems themselves, perhaps the Lyrical Ballads' greatest legacy lies in its Preface added by Wordsworth to the second edition published in 1800.

The original 1798 publication of Lyrical Ballads was issued with an 'Advertisement' by Wordsworth, designed to prepare the reader for the unorthodox style of poetry the work contained. The 'Advertisement' consisted of several paragraphs which openly condemn the "gaudiness and inane phraseology of many modern writers" and asks instead that readers "consent to be pleased in spite of that most dreadful enemy to [their] pleasures: [their] own pre-established codes of decisions." (Wordsworth, 1798). The Preface added in 1800 however is a much longer apology of the Poet's own style and was in fact expanded once again for a further edition in 1802.