Which poet co-wrote 'Lyrical Ballads' with Samuel Taylor Coleridge?

William Wordsworth co-wrote Lyrical Ballads with Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

The collection first appeared in 1798 as Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems. Wordsworth wrote most of the poems, while Coleridge contributed four, including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Their collaboration helped establish the English Romantic movement by challenging the formal poetic diction favored by much eighteenth-century verse.

Wordsworth and Coleridge aimed to bring poetry closer to ordinary speech and common life. Their subjects included rural workers, children, wanderers, and people living at the margins of polite society. This approach did not mean the poems were plain or merely realistic: imagination transformed everyday experiences into emotionally and philosophically powerful scenes.

The 1800 edition is especially important because it introduced Wordsworth's famous Preface, which explained the pair's poetic principles. Later editions expanded that argument, making it a foundational statement of British Romantic literary theory. A common mistake is to treat Lyrical Ballads as a collection written equally by both poets; Wordsworth supplied most of the volume, though Coleridge's smaller contribution included one of its most celebrated poems.