2004 | OriginalPaper | Chapter
The Poet as Critic and Theorist
In addition to their deep and abiding commitment to the practice of verse, Wordsworth and Coleridge were both preoccupied with developing poetic theory. In this chapter I want to discuss their early ideas on poetics, looking closely at two key documents: first, Wordsworth’s Prefaces to the 1800 and 1802 editions of Lyrical Ballads, and then Coleridge’s reply to this, in Biographia Literaria, published in 1817.