Wordsworth's Revisitings

Acknowledgements; Abbreviations; Introduction; 1 Second Thoughts; 2 The Ruined Cottage Revisited; 3 The Prelude 1804-1820; 4 The Prelude 1820-1850; 5 Where Once We Stood Rejoicing; 6 On Sarum's Plain; Bibliography

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.

A book of deceiving proportions, 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