The Excursion and The Recluse

In 1798, Coleridge persuaded Wordsworth that it was his destiny to write the first truly philosophical poem, a project Wordsworth dubbed 'The Recluse, or Views of Nature, Man and Society'. It was, as Wordsworth eventually conceived it, to be a poem in three Parts, each of many books. This is the first ever edition of all the poetry intended to form part of the great work. It includes two poems already written in 1798, 'The Old Cumberland Beggar' and 'A Night Piece'; 'Home at Grasmere' (1806), designated 'The Recluse, Part First, Book First'; four other short poems written for 'The Recluse' in 1808 and 1826; and 'The Recluse, Part Second', otherwise known as 'The Excursion' in the text of 1814. (This is the only reading edition of the original text of 'The Excursion'.) The texts included are selected from 'The Poems of William Wordsworth: Collected Reading Texts from the Cornell Wordsworth', edited by Jared Curtis and first published by Humanities-Ebooks in 2009.

William Wordsworth, one of the leaders of the Romantic Movement in English literature, first published "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" in 1807. This timeless tribute to nature's beauty and its ability inspire the human spirit is used with permission of the Wordsworth Trust.