J. R. Watson

On its first appearance English Poetry of the Romantic Period was widely praised as on of the best introductions to the subject. This edition includes updated material in the light of recent work in Romanticism and Romantic poetry. The book discusses the concerns that linked the Romantic poets, from their responses to the political and social upheavals around them to their interest in the poet's visionary and prophetic role. It includes helpful and authoritative discussions of figures such as Blake, Clare, Coleridge, Crabbe, Keats, Scott, Shelley and Wordsworth.

This textbook/workbook trains students’ eyes to develop a visual understanding of color and the principles of design through guided observation and engaging activities. Lavishly illustrated with full-color graphics and photos, the book demonstrates how color and other design elements are combined in nature and the visual arts. Part One presents color, the most immediately noticeable element of design. Part Two integrates color with the other design elements and shows how they interact according to the principles of design. Students can apply their learning by completing a series of activities and record their work with photos for future reference.

An 'Annotated Anthology of Hymns' treats the hymn as a literary form deserving of respect. It includes 250 hymns from the English-speaking world , covering the range from the earliest years of the Christian church to the present day, with notes on the words and the tunes.

D. H. Lawrence, writing of the poems that had meant most to him, said that they were `still not woven so deep in me as the rather banal Nonconformist hymns that penetrated through and through my childhood'. It is not easy to account for this, and most writing about hymns has not helped because it has concentrated on their content and function in worship and liturgy. In the present book the author tries to account for feelings like Lawrence's by examining the hymn form and its progress through the centuries from the Reformation to the present day. He begins by discussing the status of a hymn text and relates it to the demands made upon it by the needs of singing. A chronological study then traces the development of the English hymn, from the metrical psalms of the Reformation, through the seventeenth century and Isaac Watts to the Wesleys, Cowper, Toplady, and others, and then to the great flood of hymn writing that occurred during the Victorian period, together with the great success of Hymns Ancient and Modern. There are chapters on American hymnody and women's hymn writing, and sections on gospel hymns and the translation of German hymnody. A final chapter takes the story into the twentieth century, with a brief postscript on the revival of hymn writing since 1960.

On its first appearance English Poetry of the Romantic Period was widely praised as on of the best introductions to the subject. This edition includes updated material in the light of recent work in Romanticism and Romantic poetry. The book discusses the concerns that linked the Romantic poets, from their responses to the political and social upheavals around them to their interest in the poet's visionary and prophetic role. It includes helpful and authoritative discussions of figures such as Blake, Clare, Coleridge, Crabbe, Keats, Scott, Shelley and Wordsworth.

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 early poems Wordsworth gives us, as Professor Watson expresses it, 'A poetry the texture of which allows no escape'. He stresses the skill with which Wordsworth varies his language according to the character of each poem, and concludes that the language of Lyrical Ballads should be seen as a whole: we should beware of regarding the more elevated diction of 'Tintern Abbey' as the true voice of Wordsworth, and of writing off the simpler style of the tales. The main part of the essay is devoted to The Prelude, in which the author finds some important points of resemblance to Paradise Lost. Although The Prelude is ostensibly an autobiography, it deals with the loss of the paradise of childhood and in some respects raises the long autobiographical poem to the level of epic. The final section considers the sonnets and The Excursion, Wordsworth's later and more sombre meditation on the central problems of human life. The essay explains in many contexts, both in Wordsworth's prose and his verse, his fundamental conceptions of the poet as a human being who shares the joys and sorrows of all mankind with a more than common enthusiasm.