Literature in Context
An Open Anthology of Literature in English, 1400-1925

"XXII [The Red Wheelbarrow]"
By William Carlos Williams

Transcription, editorial commentary, and markup by Students and Staff at the University of Virginia, Andrew Rivard Hill, Tonya Howe
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Sources

Paris : Contact Publishing Company, 1923The poem now known as "The Red Wheelbarrow" was first published in Spring and All (1923) under the numerical heading "XXII". Spring and All was a highly influential, experimental work in the imagist movement, containing segments of both prose and poetry. Imagism is an early 20th century aesthetic movement characterized by free verse (a verse form that rejects traditional poetic forms) and an economical directness of expression that sought to capture perceptions in precise images--a reaction to the efflorescensce of much Romantic and Victorian verse. Page images are provided courtesy of the first edition, housed in the Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature, Special Collections, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA. The first edition was printed in a small run of 300 copies by Maurice Darantiere, a well-known modernist printer, at his press in Dijon.

Editorial Statements

Research informing these annotations draws on publicly-accessible resources, with links provided where possible. Annotations have also included common knowledge, defined as information that can be found in multiple reliable sources. If you notice an error in these annotations, please contact lic.open.anthology@gmail.com.

Original spelling and capitalization is retained, though the long s has been silently modernized and ligatured forms are not encoded.

Hyphenation has not been retained, except where necessary for the sense of the word.

Page breaks have been retained. Catchwords, signatures, and running headers have not.

Materials have been transcribed from and checked against first editions, where possible. See the Sources section for more information.

Citation

Williams, William Carlos. "XXII [The Red Wheelbarrow]". Spring and All, Contact Publishing Company, 1923 , p 74 . Literature in Context: An Open Anthology. http://anthologydev.lib.virginia.edu/work/Williams/williams-wheelbarrow. Accessed: 2025-04-16T09:55:09.386Z

Linked Data

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[TP] Spring and All

 by
 William Carlos Williams
Page [TP]Page [TP]

Footnotes