page_title: I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
section_title: Contemporary
hierarchical_section_title: I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud / Reception / Contemporary
caption_attribution_description: English: The title page of Poems in two volumes, the series of works by William Wordsworth. Original work was published before 1923 (US) and unknown authorship before 1939 (UK). It would be impractical, and I believe impossible, to find who originally held the copyright, and its status now.
context_page_description: "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" is a lyric poem by William Wordsworth. It is Wordsworth's best-known work.
  The poem was inspired by an event on 15 April 1802 in which Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy came across a "long belt" of daffodils. Written some time between 1804 and 1807, it was first published in 1807 in Poems, in Two Volumes, and a revised version was published in 1815.
  In a poll conducted in 1995 by the BBC Radio 4 Bookworm programme to determine the nation's favourite poems, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud came fifth. Often anthologised, the poem is commonly seen as a classic of English Romantic poetry, although Poems, in Two Volumes, in which it first appeared, was poorly reviewed by Wordsworth's contemporaries.
context_section_description: Poems, in Two Volumes was poorly reviewed by Wordsworth's contemporaries, including Lord Byron, whom Wordsworth came to despise. Byron said of the volume, in one of its first reviews, "Mr. W[ordsworth] ceases to please, ... clothing [his ideas] in language not simple, but puerile". Wordsworth himself wrote ahead to soften the thoughts of The Critical Review, hoping his friend Francis Wrangham would push for a softer approach. He succeeded in preventing a known enemy from writing the review, but it did not help; as Wordsworth himself said, it was a case of, "Out of the frying pan, into the fire". Of any positives within Poems, in Two Volumes, the perceived masculinity in "The Happy Warrior", written on the death of Nelson and unlikely to be the subject of attack, was one such. Poems like "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" could not have been further from it. Wordsworth took the reviews stoically.
  Even Wordsworth's close friend Coleridge said (referring especially to the "child-philosopher" stanzas VII and VIII of "Intimations of Immortality") that the poems contained "mental bombast". Two years later, however, many were more positive about the collection. Samuel Rogers said that he had "dwelt particularly on the beautiful idea of the 'Dancing Daffodils'", and this was echoed by Henry Crabb Robinson. Critics were rebutted by public opinion, and the work gained in popularity and recognition, as did Wordsworth.
  Poems, in Two Volumes was savagely reviewed by Francis Jeffrey in the Edinburgh Review (without, however, singling out "I wandered lonely as a Cloud"), but the Review was well known for its dislike of the Lake Poets. As Sir Walter Scott put it at the time of the poem's publication, "Wordsworth is harshly treated in the Edinburgh Review, but Jeffrey gives ... as much praise as he usually does", and indeed Jeffrey praised the sonnets.
  Upon the author's death in 1850, The Westminster Review called "I wandered lonely as a Cloud" "very exquisite".
caption: The title page of Poems, in Two Volumes
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