There have been numberless tributes paid to William Wordsworth (1770-1850) as one of the supreme poets of the English language; none comes with a truer ring, or with more authority for our own time, than this essay by Dr. Helen Darbishire. The author has long been known for the distinction of her Wordsworth studies, which include The Poet Wordsworth, 1950, an Edition of the Poems of 1807, and editorship, with E. de Selincourt, of the Poetical Works.
Dr. Darbishire was Principal of Somerville College, Oxford, from 1931 to 1945, and her published work includes De Quincey’s Literary Criticism and Early Lives of Milton. She is engaged on a definitive edition of The Poetical Works of John Milton, in which Paradise Lost has already appeared.