Overview

Nothing was more important to Wordsworth than tracing the evidence that affinities had been preserved between all the stages of the life of man. In this beautifully written and thoughtful book Wordsworth's biographer and editor Stephen Gill explores the ways in which the poet attempted as an artist to maintain such continuities and shows how revisitings of various kinds are at the heart of his creativity. Habitually reviewing all of his work, both published and that still in manuscript, Wordsworth painstakingly revised at the level of verbal detail or recast it more largely. New poems frequently emerged from re-engagement with old, often serving as a sequel to or commentary from the maturer poet on his own earlier creation, and acts of self-borrowing and self-reference are plentiful. These linkings provide insights into the powerful vision the poet maintained that his imaginative creation was one evolving unity and reveal much about the obsessions and drives of the great poet. Combining textual analysis, critical commentary, and biographical narrative, Gill explores what binds Wordsworth's later, less well-known poems to his earlier work. At the centre of the book is an account of the evolution of The Prelude from 1804 to 1839, in which it is argued that Wordsworth's masterpiece must be followed through all its versions, seen as a poem growing old alongside its creator.

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9780199687985

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Reviews

`ordworth's Revisitings is the product of mammoth scholarship that makes a worthy addition to the sheves of able academics and hopeless Romantics. Crisp, elegant and smartly put-together, Stephen Gill warrants ample praise for this absorbing and attractive creation.' Sarah Lovell, English `a richly detailed interrogation of the poet's practice ... Gill the critic demonstrates the pleasures and insights possible when we stop searching for the right textual variant and instead take each unique text as representing to its own complex historical moment.' James M. Garrett, The Review of English Studies `This is the most important book on Wordsworth published to date in this century ... Essential.' D.A. Robinson, Choice `Early on in this outstanding book, Stephen Gill demonstrates his superb biographical and textual knowledge of Wordsworth ... we are very, very fortunate to have access to Gill's encyclopedic, humane knowledge of Wordsworth's life, context, history, and texts through this book. Indispensable, rather than recommended.' Heidi Thomson, Modern Language Review `a virtuoso feat of reading through revision, and a permanently valuable advance in criticism of the poet ... Stephen Gill's important work will help many readers to feel more powerfully the profound strangeness that is inseparable from this poetry's greatness.' Peter McDonald, Times Literary Supplement `this book fundamentally alters - or should alter - many of the presumptions with which Wordsworth has been taught, especially to undergraduates.' Lawrence Poston, Review 19 `Stephen Gill has written a wonderfully assured and accomplished piece of literary scholarship' Seamus Perry, Wordsworth Circle

There is no doubt that both experienced and new readers of Wordsworth will find many valuable insights in this elegantly written book. Not least, textual scholars might note Gills observation (made with an editors eye) that Wordsworths habit and technique of revisiting explain his hostility to chronological arrangements of poems. James Vigus, Notes and Queries

Author Information

Stephen Gill is retired Professor of English, University of Oxford and a Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford. He is a Trustee of the Wordsworth Trust and has published many books on Wordsworth, including William Wordsworth: A Life (1989), Wordsworth and the Victorians (1998, both OUP), The Prelude (1991), and Companion to Wordsworth (2003, both Cambridge University Press). His edition of The Salisbury Plain Poems with Cornell University Press in 1975 inaugurated The Cornell Wordsworth Series and he has edited Victorian novels-by Gaskell, Dickens, Trollope, George Eliot, Gissing-for OUP and Penguin. His previous edition of Wordsworth inaugurated the OUP 'Oxford Poets' series in 1984.

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