In the late summer of 1800 Wordsworth had several reasons to hope for the success of a second edition of Lyrical Ballads. First, the 500-copy print run of the 1798 edition had sold fairly well, the volume had received more positive than negative reviews, and its publisher Joseph Cottle had given the copyright to Lyrical Ballads back to Wordsworth. Seven poems from the 1798 Lyrical Ballads had been reprinted between 2 April and 19 September 1800 in Daniel Stuart's newspapers the Morning Postand the Courier, and Coleridge had convinced a successful London publishing firm, held principally by Thomas Norton Longman, to publish a two-volume edition of Lyrical Ballads that announced Wordsworth as the author. Longman agreed to pay Wordsworth 80 pounds for two printings – substantially more than he was paid for the first edition – and also provided for a more sizeable print run of the 1800 edition: 750 copies of volume 1 and 1,000 copies of volume 2.

In the summer and autumn of 1800, William, his sister Dorothy, and their friends S. T. Coleridge and Sarah Hutchinson worked intensely on a manuscript of the new edition from which they intended Longman's Bristol printers Biggs & Cottle to prepare the final copy. In mid-July, with the help of his friends Wordsworth sent off a series of letters to Biggs & Cottle detailing a variety of revisions and instructions to reorder several poems from the 1798 volume.