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Lucy Gray

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Versions of
Lucy Gray
by William Wordsworth

The poem was inspired by Wordsworth being surrounded by snow, and his sister's memory of a real incident that happened at Halifax. Wordsworth explained the origins when he wrote, "Written at Goslar in Germany in 1799. It was founded on a circumstance told me by my Sister, of a little girl who, not far from Halifax in Yorkshire, was bewildered in a snow-storm. Her footsteps were traced by her parents to the middle of the lock of a canal, and no other vestige of her, backward or forward, could be traced. The body however was found in the canal." "Lucy Gray" was first published in Volume 2 of the 1800 edition of Lyrical Ballads.

25464Lucy GrayWilliam Wordsworth
Versions of Lucy Gray include:
Frontispiece to Poems (1815) Volume I pointing to poem