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“I am convinced that there are three things to rejoice at in this Age—The Excursion Your Pictures, and Hazlitt's depth of Taste.”—John Keats to Benjamin Robert Haydon
“I have been reading Wordsworth's Excursion with many tears and prayers too. To me he is not only poet, but preacher and prophet of God's new and divine philosophy—a man raised up as a light in a dark time.”—Charles Kingsley
The Excursion by William Wordsworth is a dramatic poem that advances largely through debate among the four main speakers: the Poet, the Wanderer, the Solitary, and the Pastor; the action of the poem seems to take place over five days. It was Wordsworth's second long poem, his public attempt at a “Great Poem,” and his only work of any length to be read by most of his contemporaries. While The Prelude has found more favor with today's readers, The Excursion appealed to the Victorians, who embraced it, considering this influential work a source of spiritual strength in an uncertain world.
This Cornell Wordsworth volume presents the first scholarly edition of The Excursion in half a century—and the first true scholarly edition of the original 1814 text. All manuscripts produced under the author's supervision are separately and completely transcribed in this edition. An introduction, a manuscript history, lists of printed verbal and nonverbal variants, extensive editors' notes, and selected photographs also chronicle the poem's full evolution. In short, this edition makes it possible, for the first time, to follow the complete compositional history of Wordsworth's epic.
Reviews
“With the publication of the complete
Excursion in this new volume, the Cornell series now presents the longest poem that Wordsworth published in his lifetime whole. Moreover, the lack of the printer's manuscripts for the complete poem has supported the decision of the editors to choose as their reading text the corrected second issue of the poem in 1814. Many will feel that the lack is fortunate, because the consequence is that the edition presents, for the first time, an annotated text of the poem as it entered literary history. One cannot overestimate the importance of this achievement for anyone interested in the British Romantics. The volume is a triumphant capstone to the series it concludes.”—Peter Manning, Stony Brook University
About the Author
Sally Bushell is Lecturer in English Literature, Director of Graduate Studies, and Co-Director of The Wordsworth Centre at Lancaster University. She is the author of Re-Reading The Excursion. James A. Butler is Professor of English at La Salle University. He is the editor of The Ruined Cottage and The Pedlar and Lyrical Ballads and Other Poems, 1797-1800, also in the Cornell Wordsworth. Michael Jaye has retired as Professor of English at Rutgers University. David García is Associate Provost of Ithaca College.
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