"I needed to be made to feel that there was real, permanent happiness in tranquil contemplation. Wordsworth taught me this, not only without turning away from, but with a greatli increased in, the common feelings and common destiny of human being" – John Stuart Mill

          Wordsworth’s first great poetry appeared in Lyrical Ballads (1798), at the end of a decade and initiated a body of poetry which, as Keats said, "thinks into the human heart". This new edition spans Wordsworth’s career and contains generous selections from Lyrical Ballads and from the poems written during the fertile years spent at Dove Cottage in Grasmere. The full text of the earliest version of The Prelude is included, together with extracts from the extended versions of 1805 and 1850.