William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge published Lyrical Ballads in 1798 during an era of revolutionary ideals concerning democracy and human rights. These ideals are reflected in the collection’s poems and in its “Advertisement” (or introduction). Both poets wanted to democratize poetry by using common rather than formal language and focusing on everyday experiences and emotions. Their poems’ subject matter was humble, rustic people who lived close to nature, such as mothers, sailors, hunters, and farmers. In the preface of later editions of Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth explained that they wanted to write poems in “the language really used by men,” and he famously defined poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” The book’s publication sparked a revolution in literature and marked the beginning of English Romanticism.
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