The appearance of Wordsworth's and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads (1798) and of Wordsworth's preface to the second edition (1800) have generally been regarded as the first major landmark of a new era in English literature. The authors announced a fresh approach to poetry, their purpose being 'to throw over incidents taken from common life a certain colouring of the imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented in an unusual aspect...' In these...