ABSTRACT
Wordsworth’s preface and endnotes in the rst volume defend against criticisms levelled at the 1798 Lyrical Ballads, and they also link its lyrical ballads genre, ethos and tone to the new pastoral poems and emotional place-keeping maintained by the second volume. In contrast to the rst volume’s sparse (reprinted) footnotes, headnotes and subtitles, the second volume includes several poems with prose supplements that engage with the vogue for touring the English Lake District and exploring its local histories.1 As a tour guide and editor Wordsworth takes readers of the rst volume on a geographical, metaphorical and a ective journey into the second volume,2 which involves prose that juxtaposes the pleasures of reading his poems with picturesque touring in northern England. Many of Wordsworth’s prose notes comment on the landscape, customs and people in the Lake District, but primarily they serve as directions for how readers can travel meaningfully through his poetic collection. While these scattered notes do not detail a systematic way of reading the poems in the 1800 volumes, they do ask readers to re ect on, adjust and amend their interpretations of individual and multiple poems.
