Excerpt from Letters of the Wordsworth Family, Vol. 1 of 3: From 1787 to 1855, Collected and Edited No one can regret more than I do the long delay in the publication of these Letters of the Wordsworth Family, since the year (1895) in which I undertook, and began in 1896, the preparation of the Poems of Wordsworth for the Eversley edition of the Messrs. Macmillan. It was originally intended that a selection of the poet's Letters should be issued in one or two volumes, after the completion of the Poems, the Prose Works, and the Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, in the twelve volumes of that edition. For reasons which it is unnecessary to explain, that intention was not carried out, but the collection of Letters was continued and extended. It was limited at first to those of the poet and his sister; but afterwards enlarged by the inclusion of others written by Wordsworth's brother, wife, and daughter, as well as by his sister-in-law Sarah Hutchinson, and his son-in-law Edward Quillinan. As the work progressed, it became increasingly evident that no new Life of Wordsworth was needed other than that supplied by the letters of the family. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.