Tim Fulford provides detailed readings of a range of little-known, late and difficult poems which together present an alternative Wordsworth to the one we are used to. This newly-revealed Wordsworth continued experimenting with form, genre and style as his career progressed so as to ponder the challenging experiences presented by later life. Fulford invites the reader to engage, through Wordsworth's poetry, with such broadly-felt concerns as quarantine, isolation, mental illness and bereavement. Focused yet broad in chronological scope, this study also considers the literature of Wordsworth's old age in relation to his earlier work.

‘… a stimulating and searching discussion of the experimentalism of Wordsworth’s later poetry, with far-reaching and wide-ranging commentary concerning the historical, social, and cultural context behind it, the biographical circumstances that prompted its themes and diction, and the literary traditions that impacted its genre and form.’

Eliza Borkowska Source: European Romantic Review

‘I would foreground here an aspect of Fulford’s approach that has long given his scholarship such impressive heft in the field: an agile and always perfectly judged mapping of a poet’s working onto a dense reading context. By that I mean Fulford draws on his encyclopaedic knowledge of the early Romantics to reveal new facets of Wordsworth’s engagement with writers both living and dead.’

Daniel Cook Source: The Charles and Mary Lamb Journal