| Work | Date | Key Facts |
|---|---|---|
| Lyrical Ballads | 1798 (2nd ed. 1800) | • With Coleridge • Manifesto of Romanticism • Wordsworth: 19 poems (including "Tintern Abbey") • Coleridge: 4 poems (including "Ancient Mariner") • Anonymous (1798), names added (1800) Wordsworth's poems: • "Lines Written in Early Spring" • "The Thorn" • "We Are Seven" • "Expostulation and Reply" • "The Tables Turned" • "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey" |
| Preface to Lyrical Ballads | 1800 (revised 1802) | • Romantic manifesto • Poetry: "Spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings...recollected in tranquility" • Language: "Language really used by men" • Subject: Incidents from "common" life (rustic/humble) • Why rustic life? "Passions...incorporated with beautiful forms of nature...speak plainer language" • Poet: Man "endued with more lively sensibility" • Purpose: "Make incidents of common life interesting" |
| "Tintern Abbey" (Full: Lines Composed...) | 1798 | • Blank verse meditation • Revisit to Wye Valley (5 years after first visit) • Famous line: "The still, sad music of humanity" • Three stages of relationship with nature: 1. Childhood (physical pleasure) 2. Youth (passion, "aching joys") 3. Maturity (philosophical, spiritual) • Addressed to Dorothy (sister) • "Nature never did betray the heart that loved her" |
| The Prelude | 1805 (completed) 1850 (published) | • "Growth of a Poet's Mind" • Autobiographical epic (14 books, 1850 version) • Blank verse • Addressed to Coleridge • Childhood, Cambridge, France, crisis, recovery • "Spots of Time" • Published posthumously • 1799 (2-part), 1805 (13-book), 1850 (14-book, final) |
| "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" | 1807 (written 1804) | • Daffodils poem • Inspired by Dorothy's journal entry • "They flash upon that inward eye" • "The bliss of solitude" • Ullswater, Lake District |
| "Ode: Intimations of Immortality" | 1807 (written 1802-04) | • Full title: "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" • Theory: Pre-existence, childhood = "trailing clouds of glory" • "The Child is father of the Man" • "Shades of the prison-house" • Epigraph: "The Rainbow" (own poem) • Irregular ode, 11 stanzas |
| "Resolution and Independence" | 1807 (written 1802) | • Leech-gatherer (old man) • Despondency vs. fortitude • "We Poets...begin in gladness...end in despondency and madness" |
| "The Solitary Reaper" | 1807 | • Scottish Highlands • "Behold her, single in the field" • Mysterious song |
| "Composed Upon Westminster Bridge" | 1807 (written 1802) | • Sonnet • London at dawn • "Earth has not anything to show more fair" • Urban nature |
| "London, 1802" | 1807 (written 1802) | • Sonnet • Subject: Milton (eulogy) • "Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour" • England needs Milton's virtue • "Thy soul was like a star" |
| "The World Is Too Much with Us" | 1807 (written 1802) | • Sonnet • Materialism critique • "Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers" • "I'd rather be / A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn" |
| "My Heart Leaps Up" | 1807 (written 1802) | • Short lyric (9 lines) • "The Child is father of the Man" • Rainbow • Used as epigraph for "Immortality Ode" |
| The Excursion | 1814 | • Long philosophical poem (9 books) • Part of unfinished "Recluse" • The Wanderer, Solitary, Pastor • Blank verse |
| "She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways" | 1800 | • Lucy poem • "A violet by a mossy stone" • "But she is in her grave" |
| Lucy Poems | 1799-1800 | • 5 poems about mysterious Lucy • Written in Germany • Identity unknown (possibly imaginary) |
| Poem | Date | Key Facts |
|---|---|---|
| "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" | 1798 (revised 1817) | • Supernatural ballad • In Lyrical Ballads (opened collection) • Story: Mariner shoots Albatross → curse → all crew die → penance → redemption • Reason for curse: Shooting the Albatross • Frame narrative (Wedding Guest) • "Water, water, everywhere, / Nor any drop to drink" • "He prayeth best, who loveth best" • Marginal glosses (added 1817) • 7 parts • Archaic language • Life-in-Death (skeleton ship) |
| "Kubla Khan" | 1816 (written 1797) | • Fragment (54 lines) • Subtitle: "A Vision in a Dream" • Opium dream (interrupted by "person from Porlock") • "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan / A stately pleasure-dome decree" • "Sunless sea" • "Woman wailing for her demon-lover" • "Ancestral voices prophesying war" • River Alph • Exotic, mysterious imagery |
| "Christabel" | 1816 (Part I: 1797 Part II: 1800) | • Unfinished (2 parts published, planned 5) • Gothic ballad • Christabel & Geraldine (mysterious woman, vampire-like) • Innovative meter (stress-based, not syllabic) • Supernatural evil |
| "Dejection: An Ode" | 1802 | • Personal crisis poem • Loss of imaginative power • "A grief without a pang" • Addressed to "Lady" (Sara Hutchinson originally) • Contrast with Wordsworth's joy |
| "Frost at Midnight" | 1798 | • Conversation poem • To infant son Hartley • Blank verse meditation • Nature's teaching • Lake District hoped for son |
| "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison" | 1800 | • Conversation poem • Left behind (injury) while friends walk • Imaginative participation • To Charles Lamb |
| Work | Key Concepts |
|---|---|
| Biographia Literaria (1817) | • Literary autobiography & criticism • 24 chapters Imagination vs. Fancy: • Primary Imagination: "Living power and prime agent of all human perception" • Secondary Imagination: Poetic, creative (dissolves, diffuses, dissipates to recreate) • Fancy: Mechanical, aggregative (no creation) Other concepts: • "Willing suspension of disbelief" (poetic faith) • Organic form vs. mechanical regularity • Analysis of Wordsworth's poetry • Critique of Wordsworth's Preface |
| Lectures on Shakespeare (1808-1819) | • Delivered orally, notes published later • Defended Shakespeare's judgment = genius • Organic form in Shakespeare • Psychological insights |
| "Kubla Khan" Preface | • Account of opium dream • "Person from Porlock" interruption • Fragment explanation |
| Poem | Date | Key Facts |
|---|---|---|
| Endymion | 1818 | • Long narrative poem (4 books) • "A thing of beauty is a joy forever" • Greek myth (Endymion & moon goddess) • Attacked by critics • "I stood tip-toe upon a little hill" (related) |
| "La Belle Dame sans Merci" | 1819 (pub. 1820) | • Ballad • Theme: Fatal magical love • Knight enchanted by fairy lady • "Alone and palely loitering" • "La Belle Dame" = "The Beautiful Lady Without Mercy" • Dream-like, mysterious |
| "The Eve of St. Agnes" | 1819 (pub. 1820) | • Narrative poem (42 Spenserian stanzas) • Porphyro & Madeline (lovers) • St. Agnes' Eve (Jan 20) - maidens dream of future husbands • Medieval romance • Sensuous imagery (feast description) |
| Lamia | 1819 (pub. 1820) | • Narrative poem • Lamia (serpent-woman) & Lycius • Philosophy destroys beauty • Apollonius (cold philosopher) exposes Lamia |
| Hyperion | 1818-19 (abandoned) | • Epic fragment (3 books) • Fall of Titans, rise of Olympians • Miltonic blank verse • Unfinished |
| The Fall of Hyperion | 1819 (abandoned) | • Revision of Hyperion • Dream-vision framework • Moneta (priestess) • Also unfinished |
| Ode | Key Themes & Lines |
|---|---|
| "Ode to a Nightingale" | • 8 stanzas • Escape into bird's song (immortal art vs. mortal suffering) • "My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains / My sense" • "Darkling I listen" • "Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!" • "Forlorn! the very word is like a bell" • Returns to reality: "Do I wake or sleep?" |
| "Ode on a Grecian Urn" | • 5 stanzas • Art's permanence vs. life's transience • "Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness" • "Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard / Are sweeter" • "Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!" • Famous conclusion: "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know" • Ekphrasis (description of visual art) |
| "Ode to Psyche" | • First of 1819 odes • Psyche (Greek goddess, late addition to pantheon) • "I will be thy priest" • Builds mental temple for Psyche |
| "Ode on Melancholy" | • 3 stanzas • Melancholy dwells with Beauty, Joy, Pleasure • "She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die" • No escape from melancholy, embrace it |
| "Ode on Indolence" | • Indolence (pleasant laziness) • Three figures: Love, Ambition, Poesy • Rejects all three for indolence |
| "To Autumn" | • 3 stanzas (11 lines each) • Most perfect ode (critics) • Personified autumn • "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness" • "Where are the songs of spring?" • Acceptance, stasis & change balanced • No overt melancholy |
| Order | Ode | Date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ode to Psyche | April 1819 |
| 2 | Ode to a Nightingale | May 1819 |
| 3 | Ode on a Grecian Urn | May 1819 |
| 4 | Ode on Melancholy | May 1819 |
| 5 | Ode on Indolence | May-June 1819 |
| 6 | To Autumn | September 1819 |
| Concept | Definition/Explanation |
|---|---|
| Negative Capability | • Coined in letter to brothers (Dec 1817) • "Being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason" • Opposed to Coleridge's philosophical quest • Shakespeare exemplified it • Poet's capacity for empathy, receptivity |
| "Life of Sensations" | • "O for a Life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts!" • Values immediate experience over philosophy • Sensory richness in poetry |
| Empathy | • Poet enters into other identities • "If a sparrow come before my window, I take part in its existence" • Self-annihilation in subject |
| "Mansion of Many Apartments" | • Analogy for human life/mind • Progression through stages of understanding |
| Poem | Date | Key Facts |
|---|---|---|
| Adonais | 1821 | • Elegy for Keats (subject of Adonais) • Pastoral elegy (55 Spenserian stanzas) • Blames critics for Keats's death • "He has outsoared the shadow of our night" • Platonic immortality • "He is made one with Nature" |
| "Ozymandias" | 1818 | • Sonnet • Ruins of Ramses II statue • "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" • Irony: nothing remains • Transience of power |
| "Ode to the West Wind" | 1819 | • 5 sections (terza rima sonnets) • "O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being" • Destroyer & Preserver • "If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?" • Revolutionary hope • "Make me thy lyre" |
| "To a Skylark" | 1820 | • 21 stanzas • "Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!" • Bird = pure joy, unattainable ideal • "We look before and after, / And pine for what is not" • Poet envies bird's unconscious happiness |
| Prometheus Unbound | 1820 | • Lyrical drama (4 acts) • Sequel to Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound • Prometheus released (defiance, love) • Asia (wife), Demogorgon (power) • Revolutionary allegory • Closest to Paradise Lost in ambition |
| The Cenci | 1819 | • Tragedy (5 acts) • Italian Renaissance story • Count Cenci (tyrant), Beatrice (daughter) • Parricide • Written for stage (rarely performed in Shelley's time) |
| "Mont Blanc" | 1816 | • Philosophical meditation • Sublime landscape • Power, mind, nature • Blank verse |
| "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" | 1816 | • Platonic ideal • Beauty as fleeting visitation • Autobiographical elements |
| The Mask of Anarchy | 1819 (pub. 1832) | • Political poem • Response to Peterloo Massacre (1819) • "Rise like lions after slumber" • Radical, passionate |
| "England in 1819" | 1819 | • Sonnet • Attack on monarchy, church, state • Revolutionary anger |
| Work | Key Points |
|---|---|
| A Defence of Poetry (written 1821, pub. 1840) | • Response to Peacock's "Four Ages of Poetry" • Poetry "redeems from decay the visitations of the divinity in man" • Poets = "unacknowledged legislators of the world" • Poetry = highest form of reason • "Poets are the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present" • Imagination vs. reason |
| The Necessity of Atheism (1811) | • Pamphlet • Led to expulsion from Oxford |
| Work | Date | Key Facts |
|---|---|---|
| Childe Harold's Pilgrimage | Cantos I-II: 1812 Cantos III-IV: 1816, 1818 | • Narrative poem (Spenserian stanzas) • Childe Harold (disillusioned wanderer, Byronic hero) • Travelogue (Spain, Albania, Greece, Belgium, Alps, Italy) • Cantos I-II made Byron famous overnight: "Awoke one morning and found myself famous" • Famous quotation: "Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!" (Canto IV) • Semi-autobiographical |
| Don Juan | 1819-24 (unfinished) | • Epic satire (16 cantos + fragment, 17th) • Ottava rima (abababcc) • Opening lines: "I want a hero: an uncommon want, / When every year and month sends forth a new one" • Don Juan (innocent, passive, seduced by women) • Picaresque adventures • Satire on society, war, hypocrisy • Digressions, conversational tone • Haidée episode (Greek island girl, Canto II-IV) |
| "The Vision of Judgement" | 1822 | • Satire • Attacks Southey (Poet Laureate) • Parody of Southey's "A Vision of Judgement" (eulogy for George III) • George III's soul judged (comic) • Ottava rima |
| The Prisoner of Chillon | 1816 | • Narrative poem • François Bonivard (imprisoned in Chillon Castle) • Switzerland |
| Manfred | 1817 | • Closet drama (3 acts) • Byronic hero (guilt, isolation, defiance) • Swiss Alps setting • Faustian pact refused • Incest theme (Astarte) |
| Cain | 1821 | • Closet drama • Biblical (Cain & Abel) • Rebellion against God • Lucifer character • Controversial |
| "She Walks in Beauty" | 1815 | • Lyric • "She walks in beauty, like the night" • Celebrates woman's beauty • Hebrew Melodies collection |
| English Bards and Scotch Reviewers | 1809 | • Early published volume (satire) • Attack on critics & contemporary poets • Heroic couplets • Immature work |
| Hours of Idleness | 1807 | • First poetry collection • Harshly reviewed |
| Characteristics | Examples in Byron's Work |
|---|---|
| • Proud, defiant • Mysterious past • Guilt-ridden • Isolated from society • Superior intellect • Dark, brooding • Contemptuous of social norms • Often aristocratic | • Childe Harold • Manfred • Cain • Conrad (The Corsair) • Lara Influenced: Rochester (Jane Eyre), Heathcliff (Wuthering Heights) |
| Work | Date | Key Facts |
|---|---|---|
| Songs of Innocence | 1789 | • Illuminated book • Child's perspective, pastoral Famous poems: • "The Lamb" - Christ as lamb • "The Chimney Sweeper" (Innocence) - "weep weep" • "The Divine Image" • "Infant Joy" • "Introduction" - "Piping down the valleys wild" |
| Songs of Experience | 1794 | • Companion to Innocence • Adult perspective, darker • "Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul" Famous poems: • "The Tyger" - "Tyger Tyger, burning bright" • "The Chimney Sweeper" (Experience) - exploitation • "London" - "mind-forg'd manacles" • "The Sick Rose" • "Ah! Sun-flower" • "Introduction" - "Hear the voice of the Bard!" |
| The Marriage of Heaven and Hell | c. 1790-93 | • Prose & verse • "Proverbs of Hell" • "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom" • "Energy is Eternal Delight" • Challenges conventional morality • Devil = energy, angel = reason |
| America: A Prophecy | 1793 | • Prophetic book • American Revolution • Orc (rebellion) vs. Urizen (tyranny) |
| Europe: A Prophecy | 1794 | • Prophetic book • French Revolution era |
| The Book of Urizen | 1794 | • Prophetic book • Urizen (reason, law, tyranny) • Creation myth (parody of Genesis) |
| Jerusalem | 1804-20 | • Long prophetic poem (100 plates) • Called "perfectly mad" by Southey • Albion (England personified) • Complex mythology • Difficult, visionary |
| Milton: A Poem | 1804-11 | • Prophetic book • Milton's spirit descends to correct errors • Preface contains "Jerusalem" hymn ("And did those feet in ancient time") |
| "Auguries of Innocence" | c. 1803 | • Famous opening: "To see a World in a Grain of Sand, / And a Heaven in a Wild Flower" • "Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand" • Series of couplets |
| Figure | Represents |
|---|---|
| Urizen | Reason, law, tyranny, Old Testament God |
| Los | Imagination, prophecy, poetry (Blake's persona) |
| Orc | Energy, rebellion, revolution |
| Luvah | Passion, emotions |
| Albion | Universal Man, England |
| Urthona | Unfallen Los, spiritual imagination |
| Critic | Comment |
|---|---|
| Robert Southey | Jerusalem is "perfectly mad" |
| Northrop Frye | Blake criticism in Fearful Symmetry (1947) - major revival |
| T.S. Eliot | "Terrifying honesty" |
| Work | Date | Type & Key Facts |
|---|---|---|
| The Lay of the Last Minstrel | 1805 | Narrative poem - Scottish Border |
| Marmion | 1808 | Narrative poem - Battle of Flodden |
| The Lady of the Lake | 1810 | Narrative poem - Scottish Highlands |
| Waverley | 1814 | First historical novel - Jacobite Rising (1745) |
| Rob Roy | 1817 | Novel - Scottish outlaw |
| Ivanhoe | 1819 | Novel - Medieval England (12th C), Richard I, Robin Hood |
| The Heart of Midlothian | 1818 | Novel - Edinburgh Porteous Riots focused on |
| Kenilworth | 1821 | Novel - Elizabethan era |
| Novel | Date | Key Facts |
|---|---|---|
| Sense and Sensibility | 1811 | • First published • Dashwood family (subject) • Elinor (sense) vs. Marianne (sensibility) • "By a Lady" |
| Pride and Prejudice | 1813 | • Most popular • Elizabeth Bennet & Mr. Darcy • "It is a truth universally acknowledged..." • Social comedy, marriage plot |
| Mansfield Park | 1814 | • Fanny Price (timid heroine) • Moral seriousness • Sir Thomas Bertram |
| Emma | 1815 | • Emma Woodhouse (meddling matchmaker) • Mr. Knightley • Highbury village • "Heroine whom no one but myself will much like" (Austen) |
| Northanger Abbey | 1817 (posthumous) | • Parody of Gothic novels • Catherine Morland • Reads Gothic romances |
| Persuasion | 1817 (posthumous) | • Anne Elliot & Captain Wentworth • Second chances • Mature, autumnal tone |
| Quote/Concept | Source/Meaning |
|---|---|
| "Three or four families in a country village is the very thing to work on" | Letter to niece Defines her subject matter |
| "Perfect picture of provincial life" | Critical description of her novels |
| Irony | Key technique (narrative irony, dramatic irony) |
| Category | Item | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Famous Lines | "Still sad music of humanity" | Wordsworth (Tintern Abbey) |
| "Beauty is truth, truth beauty" | Keats (Grecian Urn) | |
| "Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean" | Byron (Childe Harold IV) | |
| "To see a World in a Grain of Sand" | Blake (Auguries of Innocence) | |
| "If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?" | Shelley (West Wind) | |
| Key Dates | Lyrical Ballads | 1798 (start of Romanticism) |
| Preface to LB | 1800 (Romantic manifesto) | |
| Keats's Odes | 1819 ("annus mirabilis") | |
| Austen's First Novel | Sense & Sensibility (1811) | |
| Subjects/Dedications | Adonais | Keats (elegy by Shelley) |
| "London, 1802" | Milton (eulogy by Wordsworth) | |
| Sense & Sensibility | Dashwood family | |
| Critical Terms | Negative Capability | Keats (uncertainties without reaching for fact) |
| Primary Imagination | Coleridge (living power in perception) | |
| "Spontaneous overflow" | Wordsworth (poetry definition) |