25/08/2026
Major Literary Works of William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth (1770–1850) was one of the chief poets of English Romanticism. His poetry is marked by his love of nature, common life, childhood, memory, imagination, and the human mind. His major works include:
1. Lyrical Ballads (1798)
Written jointly by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It is regarded as a landmark in the beginning of English Romantic poetry. Wordsworth contributed poems such as:
* “Tintern Abbey”
* “Lines Written Near Richmond”
* “We Are Seven”
* “Expostulation and Reply”
* “The Tables Turned”
A revised and expanded edition appeared in 1800, with a famous Preface in which Wordsworth explained his theory of poetry.
2. Lyrical Ballads (1800, 1802)
The Preface to the 1800 edition, substantially expanded in 1802, is one of the most important statements of Romantic poetic theory. Wordsworth argues for poetry rooted in ordinary human life and language and describes poetry as the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” recollected in tranquillity.
3. The Prelude
A long autobiographical poem.
* Written in several stages and published posthumously in 1850.
* Its full title is The Prelude, or, Growth of a Poet's Mind.
* It traces the development of Wordsworth's poetic mind through childhood, nature, education, the French Revolution and personal experience.
* It is often considered his greatest autobiographical and philosophical poem.
4. The Excursion(1 814)
* A long philosophical poem.
* It was intended to form part of a larger unfinished philosophical project, The Recluse.
* It deals with questions of human life, nature, faith, suffering and society.
5. Poems, in Two Volumes (1807)
This collection contains many of Wordsworth's most celebrated poems, including:
* “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” (Daffodils)
* “Ode: Intimations of Immortality”
* “Ode to Duty”
* “My Heart Leaps Up”
* “The Solitary Reaper”
* “Resolution and Independence”
* “Elegiac Stanzas”
* “Lines Written in Early Spring”
* “Composed upon Westminster Bridge”
* “The World Is Too Much with Us”
6. Guide to the Lakes (1810; expanded later)
Originally published as A Description of the Scenery of the Lakes in the North of England, this prose work presents Wordsworth's observations on the Lake District, landscape and the relationship between nature and human life.
7. The White Doe of Rylstone (1807)
A narrative poem based on the historical Rising of the North.
It combines historical events with Wordsworth's characteristic treatment of nature, suffering and spiritual endurance.
8. Peter Bell (1819)
* A narrative poem.
* It explores moral transformation and sympathy for living creatures.
* Wordsworth uses an apparently ordinary character to explore deeper spiritual and moral ideas.
9. The Waggoner (1819)
A narrative poem centred on Benjamin, a waggoner travelling through the Lake District.
It reflects Wordsworth's interest in ordinary people and rural life.
10. Sonnets
Wordsworth wrote hundreds of sonnets. Important examples include:
* “London, 1802”
* “The World Is Too Much with Us”
* “Composed upon Westminster Bridge”
* “It is a beauteous evening, calm and free”
* “Upon Westminster Bridge”
* “The Solitary Reaper” is not a sonnet; it is a lyric poem.
11. Ecclesiastical Sonnets (1822)
A major sequence of sonnets dealing with the history of Christianity and the Church of England in England.
12. Yarrow Revisited, and Other Poems (1835)
A later collection containing poems concerned with memory, landscape, history and human experience.
13. The River Duddon, A Series of Sonnets (1820)
A sequence of sonnets inspired by the River Duddon in the Lake District. The river becomes a symbol of time, continuity and human existence.
14. The Borderers (1795)
Wordsworth's only completed tragedy.
* It deals with moral choice, guilt, violence and human nature.
* It was written before the full development of his mature Romantic style.
15. The Convention of Cintra (1809)
A political prose work responding to the Convention of Cintra, which concerned the British military campaign during the Peninsular War.
Lyrical Ballads (1798) → The Prelude → The Excursion → Poems, in Two Volumes → The White Doe of Rylstone → The Waggoner → The River Duddon → Ecclesiastical Sonnets → The Borderers.
Wordsworth's poetry is especially associated with Nature, Childhood, Memory, Imagination, the Common Man, Rural Life, and the Growth of the Poet's Mind.
