Wordsworth After War
Recovering Peace in the Later Poetry

A rich, illuminating study of how Wordsworth's late poetry reflects his lifelong engagement with the poetics and politics of peace.

Philip Shaw (Author)

9781009363167, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 27 March 2025

298 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.434 kg

'… this is a book of richly detailed readings of lesser-known poems that consistently illuminates their inner tensions by reconstructing the personal and public contexts in which they were written and read. ' Tim Fulford, The Charles and Mary Lamb Journal

William Wordsworth's later poetry complicates possibilities of life and art in war's aftermath. This illuminating study provides new perspectives and reveals how his work following the end of the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars reflects a passionate, lifelong engagement with the poetics and politics of peace. Focusing on works from between 1814 and 1822, Philip Shaw constructs a unique and compelling account of how Wordsworth, in both his ongoing poetic output and in his revisions to earlier works, sought to modify, refute, and sometimes sustain his early engagement with these issues as both an artist and a political thinker. In an engaging style, Shaw reorients our understanding of the later writings of a major British poet and the post-war literary culture in which his reputation was forged. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

Introduction
1. Conscripting 'The Recluse'
2. Peace out of time: The White Doe of Rylstone
3. Thanksgiving after war
4. 'Returning, like a ghost unlaid': Peter Bell and The Waggoner
5. Violent waters: The River Duddon and Ecclesiastical Sketches
6. Wordsworth after Byron: Memorials of a Tour on the Continent, 1820
After Wordsworth.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]