According to Wordsworth, poetry that dealt with the higher subjects was superficial and lacked depth. This seemed like a radical view to the readers who had been accustomed to reading poetry about larger than life heroes or other such archaic subjects. Wordsworth believed that the subject of poetry should be the ‘ humble and rustic life’. To make his poetry better understood, Wordsworth added a preface in order to explain his choice of language and subjects. Since the poems contained in Lyrical Ballads were not in accordance with the conventions of poetry, they were received with skepticism initially. These poems departed in style and subject from the poetry of the Neoclassical poets. The majority of this work comprised Wordsworth’s poems. Wordsworth’s collaborative work with his friend and fellow-poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge proved to be a landmark in the history of English Literature. With this landmark publication, the turn of the century witnessed a radical change in the way poetry was read and perceived.

The Preface that he added to the subsequent 1800 edition of this work became the manifesto of a new era called the Romantic Age. He inaugurated the Romantic movement in English Literature with the publication of his Lyrical Ballads in 1798. The poet William Wordsworth was born in 1770 in the famous Lake District in England.