In 1798, the same year that Lyrical Ballads was published anonymously, another anonymous publication appeared under the cumbersome title A Series of Plays: in which it is attempted to delineate the stronger passions of the mind--each passion being the subject of a tragedy and a comedy . Whereas Wordsworth and Coleridge's literary offering received little and ambivalent notice, this volume of plays created a sensation within the literary circles in London and Edinburgh. Plays on the Passions, for such the volume was rechristened, was immediately reviewed in all the major periodicals, and a frenzied debate ensued about the authorship of the plays. At first it was readily assumed that the plays had been written by some well-known man of letters who, for some mysterious reason, chose to remain incognito, but because none of the established poets seemed to possess the unique sensibility suffused throughout the plays, all of the possible...