This chapter follows the principles outlined in the introduction by responding to the three early editions (1798, 1800, 1802) of Lyrical Ballads as a combined totality: three parts that make up one whole. It uses the historicity provided by the reception of the ‘Preface’ in each of the three parts to pull out defining features of response to the volume in its own time. John E. Jordan states of Lyrical Ballads, ‘For so long now we have thought of the work as a literary landmark, forgetting that many of the characteristics of that monument are the accumulation of age or the effects of perspective’.2 By looking at what the volume was assumed to be without (before) the ‘Preface,’ as well as once this prose essay is added, we can begin to understand its intended and actual impact within its own time. Approaching the volume in this way allows us to see how the work itself accumulates over time and in conjunction with its reception, as well as drawing out for us the core principles it was understood to embody.