Wordsworth`s verse declares a belief in the power of poetry to teach by appealing to the imagination and to the `grand elementary principle of pleasure, by which man knows, and feels, and lives, and moves`. His unique relationship with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, formed in the political and social ferment of the 1790s, produced a revolution in literature, resulting in the joint volume, Lyrical Ballads - a landmark in the history of English Romanticism. This selection, chosen from the Oxford Authors critical edition, includes all Wordsworth`s finest lyrics, and a large sample of The Prelude (1805), his extraordinary autobiographical poem in blank verse and the first truly great achievement of a new era in English poetry.