A History of 'The Thorn' William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge?s Lyrical Ballads, first published in 1798, marks a touchstone in the history of British literature. The poems in it are a testament to the burning ambitions of both authors, who sought not only fiscal success for their endeavors, but to rewrite the rules for how poetry was written by poets and received by audiences. ?The Thorn,? by Wordsworth, is a poem of many distinctions in a collection notable for its overall genius. Written at the peak of Wordsworth?s creative powers, the idea for the poem came to him at a moment of a life-changing epiphany, one which subsequently informed much of his further writings. The poem meant a lot to Wordsworth, and the history of its publication within its author?s lifetime reflects his passion for it. Wordsworth worried that ?The Thorn? was largely misunderstood, and its publication history demonstrates its creators desire to translate the message of his poem to an apathetic or misinterpreting audience. Wordsworth and Coleridge did not write the Lyrical Ballads entirely with the intention of starting a literary revolution; there was also a financial incentive driving them. Wordsworth said once that the Lyrical Ballads were written, ?For money and money alone.? Prior to the publication of Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth was at a point in his life where he had hardly any disposable income, and he desperately needed money to finance a trip he planned to take with Coleridge to Germany, which was considered the epicenter for European philosophical thought and high culture. Passage to Germany would have cost Dorothy and William twenty-five guineas; in order to finance their voyage, Wordsworth and Coleridge concocted a scheme to write poetry and sell them to a publisher. Money proved, largely, to be the impetus that forced them to produce quality work at a rapid rate. Coleridge contacted Joseph Cottle, a publisher in Bristol, writing to him about a ?plan? he was concocting. In order for the ?plan? to be fully realized, he would need money in four months; in return, Coleridge said that he and Wordsworth would be willing to reveal even the most scandalous and tragic in the ballads they would produce. In May 1798, Cottle visited both Wordsworth and Coleridge and arranged with them to produce one volume of poetry for thirty guineas. It was during this first visit that the publisher and the poets came up with an initial outline for the ballads, in terms of their form, content, and how they would be printed. On May 30, 1798, Cottle, equipped with the manuscript copy of ?The Rime of the Ancient Mariner? and a handful of other works, went back to Bristol. He subsequently provided his printer, Nathaniel Biggs, with the work provided to him by the poets. On the fourth of June, Wordsworth and Coleridge sent a note to Cottle in which they articulated exactly their ambitions for the Lyrical Ballads, in terms of both content and production. It is believed that the details behind the production of the Lyrical Ballads were negotiated between Wordsworth and Cottle in June, and by September of 1798, five hundred copies of Lyrical Ballads were printed in a foolscap octavio edition; the ballads were just about ready to meet their audience. For reasons that have not been discovered, however, Cottle decided not to go through with publishing the poems. Instead, he sold them to John and Arthur Arch, who brought the Lyrical Ballads to the public by late September in 1798. Apparently, Wordsworth was very displeased with Cottle?s handling of the situation, feeling that he had failed to capitalize on opportunities for the Lyrical Ballads to find a profitable publisher. He also wanted to know about the copyright for the poems, and was hell-bent on not relinquishing his control over their production in the future. In Wordsworth?s letters from the period, it suggests that he was starting to consider himself a professional, and having full control over the creative and practical (i.e., holding the copyright), aspects of his work was imperative. Wordsworth?s handling of the publishing situation surrounding the Lyrical Ballads suggests a man not simply concerned with profit, but also on the integrity of his craft as an artist. ?The Thorn? was the product of both Wordsworth?s desire to make money and to experiment with the conventions of poetic form. As John Jordan notes in his book Why the Lyrical Ballads, ?The Thorn? was written between March 19 and May 16, 1798 the same period that he wrote such monumental classics as ?The Idiot Boy? and ?We Are Seven.? This collection of poems, written in the spring, was produced in order to finance Wordsworth?s trip to Germany; it was also, however, the most ?experimental,? and thereby the most ambitious, of the Lyrical Ballads. The period that ?The Thorn? was written marked a high-point for Wordsworth, where his economic savvy was matched by his lofty artistic ambition, creating a prodigious volume of work. There were a handful of incidents that inspired Wordsworth?s conception of ?The Thorn.? The initial episode that set pen to paper for the poet, as his sister Dorothy notes, occurred on a gloomy day at the end of winter. For her March 19, 1798 journal entry, she writes that, ?Wm. And Basil [Montagu] and I walked the hill-tops, a very cold bleak day. We were met on our return by a severe hailstorm.? It was during this walk through the tempest that a snarled old tree attracted William?s attention. Dorothy ends her passage for the day by noting that, ?William wrote some lines describing a stunted thorn.? Many years later, William described to Isabella Fenwick the moment of inspiration for one of the most famous of all his poems: ?The Thorn arose out of my observing, on the ridge of Quantock Hill, on a stormy day, a thorn which I had often passed in calm and bright weather without noticing it. I said to myself, ?Cannot I by some invention do as much to make the Thorn permanently an impressive object as the storm has made it to my eyes at this moment??? Wordsworth?s observation of the ?snarled old tree? became a symbol for a ballad he had yet to write; he started out with the metaphor and worked from there. John Jordan notes that Wordsworth?s observations about the tree amounted to an epiphany for him; he realized, at that moment, that any object can be a source of inspiration and poetic subject for the poet. It is also significant that his walking companion on the ridge at Quantock Hill was Basil Montagu. It has frequently been noted that Wordsworth, rather bizarrely, chose to name the heroine of ?The Thorn? after Montagu?s own mother, Martha Ray. His reasons for using her name are elusive, and many academics are hard-pressed to determine the meaning of his choice, and what it says about the poem?s conception and message. Martha Ray had been a singer for members in the upper echelon of society, and her death in 1779 created an enormous scandal when it occurred. She was murdered outside of the Covent Garden by the Reverend James Hackman, a scorned lover from her past. It seems strange that Wordsworth would use his friend?s mother?s name for the character of a young woman committing infanticide, but Kenneth Johnston makes a compelling case for why the choice makes sense. Basil Montagu married a young woman in a wedding not sanctioned by his father, and as a result, was disinherited when his father passed away in1792. To only make things more miserable for Montagu, his wife died during childbirth and he was left alone to care for his son. The difficulties in Montagu?s life aroused Wordsworth?s sense of compassion and justice?he profoundly felt for his friend, whose parents were willing to make his life miserable to prove a point. Montagu?s situation raised for Wordsworth several troubling questions about parenthood, and the profound consequences of a parent?s actions on the lives around them. The long-term, damaging repercussions of one person?s actions on an individual?s psyche interested Wordsworth greatly. The link between the fictional Martha Ray and the real life woman may not be as random as it initially seems. Wordsworth was as fascinated by the psychology of everyday people as he was interested in their language and mannerisms. As Jordan notes, ?The Thorn? was written as one of four poems, the others being ?Goody Blake,? ?The Three Graves,? and Peter Bell, that, ?have the supernatural in the background, but implicitly or explicitly offer psychological and physical explanations for the phenomena.? Stephen Parrish also argues that ?The Thorn? is primarily concerned with the workings of the human mind; it is not a melodrama about a woman wronged by society, despite its almost universal interpretation that way. The human psyche is explored through the narrator, a man whose interpretation and representation of the events occurring is often misguided or completely incorrect. As Duncan Wu writes about the narrator, ?He too fails to relate a coherent story, although his excuse is different. He?s obtuse?seeing, but not understanding, what is before him.? In Wordsworth?s presentation of the narrator, the poet is demonstrating how the reader should not depend on literary text for a complete truth. The reader must be actively involved in the process of interpreting a story; they must decipher things for themselves because their source, the narrator, is not always accurate. For the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads, published in 1800, Wordsworth added a ?Note to ?The Thorn.? Wordsworth did not make any substantial changes to the actual text of his poem, but through the ?note,? he offers to his readers a handful of suggestions as to how they should read the character of the Captain, and what his aims were in creating such a narrator. He writes, ?It was my wish in this poem to show the manner in which such men cleave to the same ideas; and to follow the turns of passion, always different, yet not palpably different, by which their conversation is swayed.? The inclusion of the ?note? testifies to Wordsworth?s deep concern that his initial audience for ?The Thorn? was reading the poem, but that they were not necessarily receiving it correctly. What could easily be seen as ballad presumably about the plight of an unmarried woman with a sullied reputation, is really about, in fact, the inner workings of its narrator?s imagination, and about the accuracy of how we perceive what we sense. The poem?s later history further suggests that Wordsworth was deeply concerned with the way ?The Thorn? had been misinterpreted as a story about a mother?s plight. In 1809, Wordsworth put ?The Thorn under the category of poems ?relating to human life.? In Wordsworth?s own words, ?This class of poems I suppose to consist chiefly of objects most interesting to the mind not by its personal feelings or a strong appeal to the instincts of natural affections, but to be interesting to a meditative or imaginative mind either from the moral importance of the pictures or from the employment they give to the understanding affected through the imagination and to higher faculties.? Finally, ?The Thorn? found its place in ?Poems of the Imagination? in 1815. It would be included with these poems for several subsequent editions. ?The Thorn? has had a fascinating history since its initial conception on a wintry day in 1789. It was born out of its creators fierce desire for success, both financially and as an artist of considerable range and power. It also demonstrates the concerns Wordsworth had about how his work was presented to the public. Wordsworth was not a man of compromise, and after a few missteps, demanded complete control over his art; he recognized, rather remarkably, that the scope and influence of his poetry depended on the way it was published, and Wordsworth proved to be a deft manipulator of that burgeoning medium. 2005-04-29 00:44:16.0 2005-04-29 00:44:16.0