Lyrical Ballads

The aim of the present volume is to make available to the reader the text of the "Lyrical Ballads" as it appeared in print in 1798 and 1800, as they were first published. We have endeavoured in the text and by means of notes to provide a history of the poems from 1798 to 1805, after which Wordsworth's poems were merged in the 1815 and subsequent editions of his collected works and Coleridge's contributions were transferred to his "Sybilline Leaves" of 1817 and to later collections of his poetry. - from the foreword.