The Friendship: Wordsworth and Coleridge - Hardcover

Sisman, Adam

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670038229 ISBN 13: 9780670038220

Publisher: Viking Adult, 2007

Synopsis

Traces the friendship and collaborations of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, from their initial encounter as young men in 1795, to their creation of Lyrical Ballads, to their role in initiating England's Romantic Movement.

About this title

Review:

Many books have been written about William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge that cover their biographies and make critical assessments of their work. In Adam Sisman's The Friendship, for the first time the bond between these two poets is given center stage. The friendship flourished in the aftermath of the French Revolution. The poets met in 1795 when both were in their early twenties, two young idealists disappointed by the lack of expected change in their world following the revolution. They wanted to write a poem that would change the world, that would be accessible to all and would fire the imagination of the most humble. This desire led to the publication of Lyrical Ballads, the beginning of the English Romantic movement, which included Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey."

How did their friendship affect their work? Sisman shows the ways that their bond created competitive tension and fueled their creativity to even greater poetic achievement than might have been achieved alone. The political and social situation of the time was very influential on them, as well as their individual families and romances. They were passionate in all regards, reaching great heights and great depths of feeling. Ultimately, the two men became estranged, and then effected a tenuous reconciliation--one much talked about among their friends and acquaintances, because they had both become famous. Although Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy despaired of Coleridge, believing that he would never stop drinking and taking opium, and though their professional differences came to separate them, while they collaborated they created poems of great beauty, encouraging one another to reach lofty heights in the realms of literary expression. For these two, for a glorious time, the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. --Valerie Ryan

About the Author:

Adam Sisman is the author of A.J.P. Taylor: A Biography and BoswellÂ’s Presumptuous Task: The Making of the Life of Dr. Johnson, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for biography.

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking Adult
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0670038229
• ISBN 13: 9780670038220
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 512