Wordsworth and Coleridge were poets and political radicals who became friends. They both lived, at least for a time, in the remote English Lake District—the Coleridges were even the guests of the Wordsworths before getting their own place—and the two men spent a good deal of time discussing the theory and practice of literature. These conversations led to their collaboration on Lyrical Ballads, an important book in the history of English poetry.

Both had supported the ideals (if not the reality) of the French Revolution, and both felt a deep sympathy for the common person. As tensions between France and Great Britain heated up, both men poured their radical (for the times—we would not find their ideas particularly radical today) sympathies into poetry. Together, they conceived of a poetry that celebrated the ordinary individual, evoked a deep appreciation of nature, and was written using everyday language that the average person could understand. These principles became the foundation of English Romantic poetry.

Coleridge wrote poems for Lyrical Ballads that focused more on the supernatural, but Wordsworth also incorporated supernatural elements of folklore into some his poems. Likewise, Coleridge wove a deep reverence for nature into some of his supernatural poems, such as "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." Both helped move English poetry in a new direction, away from the neoclassical and toward simpler, more personal forms.