Illustrating Wordsworth
Wordsworth’s poetry was rarely illustrated during his lifetime, but after his death, publishers began issuing collections of his poems accompanied by illustration. Some of Great Britain’s top painters and designers, like Albert Henry Warren, Miles Birket Foster and John McWhirter, provided illustrations for these deluxe editions. Here is a very brief sampling of illustrated Wordsworth books of the latter half of the 19th century from the Edward M. Rowe Collection.
- From “The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth,” Richard Griffin, 1858
- From “The Pastoral Poems of William Wordsworth,” Sampson, Low, Son & Marston, 1859
- From “The Poems of William Wordsworth,” Routledge, 1859
- From “Wordsworth’s Poems for the Young,” Strahan, 1866
- From “Ode on Immortality and Lines on Tintern Abbey,” Cassell, 1885
- From “The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth,” Frederick Warne, 1890