Lyrical Ballads - Romanticism Arrives in English

1798

Wordsworth and Coleridge, walking the Quantock Hills, published a small anonymous book of poems. 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' led it; 'Tintern Abbey' closed it. The preface (added later) argued that poetry should use the language of common men. English Romanticism had a manifesto it had not meant to write.