Wordsworth's Vagrants explores the poet's treatment of the 'idle and disorderly' in the context of the penal laws of the 1790s, when the terror of the French Revolution caused a crackdown on the beggars and vagrants who roamed the English countryside. From the Salisbury Plain poems through to Lyrical Ballads, Quentin Bailey's readings are sensitive to Wordsworth's early radicalism without equating his socio-political engagement solely with support for the French Revolution
Prisoners, poetry, and the 'Jacobin creed' -- A 'rapid and alarming increase of crimes': law and order in eighteenth-century england -- 'Tyranny and implements of death': crimes, punishments, and the 'distracted times' of 1792-1795 -- A traveller upon the plain of sarum: sacrificial altars, penal reform, and the salisbury plain poems -- 'If good angels fail': government, lawlessness, and sympathy in the borderers -- 'Dangerous and suspicious trades': the pedlar, the board of police revenue, and the poetry of human suffering -- 'Have you any honest means of livelihood, and if so, what is it?': idle and disorderly persons in the 1798 lyrical ballads -- 'Laugh and be gay, to the woods away!': madness and the limits of poetic knowledge -- Peter Bell and 'the spirits of the mind'
