william wordsworth short biography

William Wordsworth

(1770-1850)

Who Was William Wordsworth?

Poet William Wordsworth worked with Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Lyrical Ballads (1798). The collection, which contained Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey," introduced Romanticism to English poetry. Wordsworth also showed his affinity for nature with the famous poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud." He became England's poet laureate in 1843, a role he held until his death in 1850.

Poet William Wordsworth was born on April 7, 1770, in Cockermouth, Cumberland, England. Wordsworth’s mother died when he was 7, and he was an orphan at 13. Despite these losses, he did well at Hawkshead Grammar School — where he wrote his first poetry — and went on to study at Cambridge University. He did not excel there, but managed to graduate in 1791.

Wordsworth had visited France in 1790 — in the midst of the French Revolution — and was a supporter of the new government’s republican ideals. On a return trip to France the next year, he fell in love with Annette Vallon, who became pregnant. However, the declaration of war between England and France in 1793 separated the two. Left adrift and without income in England, Wordsworth was influenced by radicals such as William Godwin.

In 1795, Wordsworth received an inheritance that allowed him to live with his sister, Dorothy. That same year, Wordsworth met Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The two became friends, and together worked on Lyrical Ballads (1798). The volume contained poems such as Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey," and helped Romanticism take hold in English poetry.

The same year that Lyrical Ballads was published, Wordsworth began writing The Prelude , an epic autobiographical poem that he would revise throughout his life (it was published posthumously in 1850). While working on The Prelud e, Wordsworth produced other poetry, such as "Lucy." He also wrote a preface for the second edition of Lyrical Ballads ; it described his poetry as being inspired by powerful emotions and would come to be seen as a declaration of Romantic principles.

"Though nothing can bring back the hour, Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower." -- from Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

In 1802, a temporary lull in fighting between England and France meant that Wordsworth was able to see Vallon and their daughter, Caroline. After returning to England, he wed Mary Hutchinson, who gave birth to the first of their five children in 1803. Wordsworth was also still writing poetry, including the famous "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" and "Ode: Intimations of Immortality." These pieces were published in another Wordsworth collection, Poems, in Two Volumes (1807).

Evolving Poetry and Philosophy

As he grew older, Wordsworth began to reject radicalism. In 1813, he was named as a distributor of stamps and moved his family to a new home in the Lake District. By 1818, Wordsworth was an ardent supporter of the conservative Tories.

Though Wordsworth continued to produce poetry — including moving work that mourned the deaths of two of his children in 1812 — he had reached a zenith of creativity between 1798 and 1808. It was this early work that cemented his reputation as an acclaimed literary figure.

In 1843, Wordsworth became England's poet laureate, a position he held for the rest of his life. At the age of 80, he died on April 23, 1850, at his home in Rydal Mount, Westmorland, England.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: William Wordsworth
• Birth Year: 1770
• Birth date: April 7, 1770
• Birth City: Cockermouth, Cumberland, England
• Birth Country: United Kingdom
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: At the end of the 18th century, poet William Wordsworth helped found the Romantic movement in English literature. He also wrote "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud."
• Fiction and Poetry
• Astrological Sign: Aries
• Cambridge University
• Death Year: 1850
• Death date: April 23, 1850
• Death City: Rydal Mount, Westmorland, England
• Death Country: United Kingdom

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CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: William Wordsworth Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/authors-writers/william-wordsworth
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: October 27, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014

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William Wordsworth Biography

Early life – William Wordsworth

Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 in Cockermouth, in north-west England. His father, John Wordsworth, introduced the young William to the great poetry of Milton and Shakespeare , but he was frequently absent during William’s childhood. Instead, Wordsworth was brought up by his mother’s parents in Penrith, but this was not a happy period. He frequently felt in conflict with his relations and at times contemplated ending his life. However, as a child, he developed a great love of nature, spending many hours walking in the fells of the Lake District. He also became very close to his sister, Dorothy, who would later become a poet in her own right.

In 1778, William was sent to Hawkshead Grammar School in Lancashire; this separated him from his beloved sister for nearly nine years. In 1787, he entered St. John’s College, Cambridge. It was in this year that he had his first published work, a sonnet in the European Magazine . While still a student at Cambridge, in 1790, he travelled to revolutionary France. He was deeply impressed by the revolutionary spirit and the principles of liberty and egalite. He also fell in love with a French woman, Annette Vallon; together they had an illegitimate daughter, Anne Caroline.

Friendship with Samuel Taylor Coleridge

After graduating, Wordsworth was fortunate to receive a legacy of £900 from Raisley Calvert to pursue a career in literature. He was able to publish his first collection of poems, An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches . That year he was also to meet Samuel Taylor Coleridge in Somerset. They became close friends and collaborated on poetic ideas. They later published a joint work – Lyrical Ballards (1798), and Wordsworth greatest work ‘ The Prelude ‘ was initially called by Wordsworth ‘ To Coleridge ‘

This period was important for Wordsworth and also the direction of English poetry. With Coleridge , Keats and Shelley , Wordsworth helped create a much more spontaneous and emotional poetry. It sought to depict the beauty of nature and the quintessential depth of human emotion. In the preface to Lyrical Ballards , Wordsworth writes of poetry:

“The spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.”

Lyrical Ballards includes some of his best-known poems, such as, “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey”, “A Slumber Did my Spirit Seal”.

A SLUMBER did my spirit seal; I had no human fears: She seemed a thing that could not feel The touch of earthly years. No motion has she now, no force; She neither hears nor sees; Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course, With rocks, and stones, and trees.

– W. Wordsworth 1799.

In 1802, after returning from a brief visit to see his daughter, Wordsworth married a childhood friend, Mary Hutchinson. Dorothy continued to live with the couple, and she became close to Mary as well as her brother. William and Mary had five children, though three died early.

Lake District, North Windermere, near Grasmere.

In 1807, he published another important volume of poetry “ Poems, in Two Volumes “, this included famous poems such as; “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”, “My Heart Leaps Up”, “Ode: Intimations of Immortality.”

I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils;

– W. Wordsworth – I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

In 1813, he received an appointment as Distributor of Stamps for Westmorland; this annual income of £400 gave him greater financial security and enabled him to devote his spare time to poetry. In 1813, he family also moved into Rydal Mount, Grasmere; a picturesque location, which inspired his later poetry.

“My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die!”

Poet Laureate

By the 1820s, the critical acclaim for Wordsworth was growing, though ironically critics note that, from this period, his poetry began losing some of its vigour and emotional intensity. His poetry was perhaps a reflection of his own ideas. The 1790s had been a period of emotional turmoil and faith in the revolutionary ideal. Towards the end of his life, his disillusionment with the French Revolution had made him more conservative in outlook. In 1839 he received an honorary degree from Oxford University and received a civil pension of £300 a year from the government. In 1843, he was persuaded to become the nation’s Poet Laureate, despite saying he wouldn’t write any poetry as Poet Laureate. Wordsworth is the only Poet Laureate who never wrote poetry during his official time in the job.

Wordsworth died of pleurisy on 23 April 1850. He was buried in St Oswald’s Church Grasmere. After his death, his widow Mary published his autobiographical ‘Poem to Coleridge’ under the title “The Prelude”.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “ Biography of William Wordsworth” , Oxford, UK. www.biographyonline.net , 22nd Jan. 2010. Last updated 6th March 2018

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Poems & Poets

William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth was one of the founders of English Romanticism and one its most central figures and important intellects. He is remembered as a poet of spiritual and epistemological speculation, a poet concerned with the human relationship to nature and a fierce advocate of using the vocabulary and speech patterns of common people in poetry. The son of John and Ann Cookson Wordsworth, William Wordworth was born on April 7, 1770 in Cockermouth, Cumberland, located in the Lake District of England: an area that would become closely associated with Wordsworth for over two centuries after his death. He began writing poetry as a young boy in grammar school, and before graduating from college he went on a walking tour of Europe, which deepened his love for nature and his sympathy for the common man: both major themes in his poetry. Wordsworth is best known for Lyrical Ballads , co-written with Samuel Taylor Coleridge , and The Prelude , a Romantic epic poem chronicling the “growth of a poet’s mind.”

Wordsworth’s deep love for the “beauteous forms” of the natural world was established early. The Wordsworth children seem to have lived in a sort of rural paradise along the Derwent River, which ran past the terraced garden below the ample house whose tenancy John Wordsworth had obtained from his employer, the political magnate and property owner Sir James Lowther, Baronet of Lowther (later Earl of Lonsdale).  

William attended the grammar school near Cockermouth Church and Ann Birkett’s school at Penrith, the home of his maternal grandparents. The intense lifelong friendship between William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy probably began when they, along with Mary Hutchinson, attended school at Penrith. Wordsworth’s early childhood beside the Derwent and his schooling at Cockermouth are vividly recalled in various passages of The Prelude and in shorter poems such as the sonnet “Address from the Spirit of Cockermouth Castle.” His experiences in and around Hawkshead, where William and Richard Wordsworth began attending school in 1779, would also provide the poet with a store of images and sensory experience that he would continue to draw on throughout his poetic career, but especially during the “great decade” of 1798 to 1808. This childhood idyll was not to continue, however. In March of 1778 Ann Wordsworth died while visiting a friend in London. In June 1778 Dorothy was sent to live in Halifax, Yorkshire, with her mother’s cousin Elizabeth Threlkeld, and she lived with a succession of relatives thereafter. She did not see William again until 1787.

In December of 1783 John Wordsworth, returning home from a business trip, lost his way and was forced to spend a cold night in the open. Very ill when he reached home, he died December 30. Though separated from their sister, all the boys eventually attended school together at Hawkshead, staying in the house of Ann Tyson. In 1787,  despite poor finances caused by ongoing litigation over Lord Lowther's debt to John Wordsworth's estate, Wordsworth went up to Cambridge as a sizar in St. John’s College. As he himself later noted, Wordsworth’s undergraduate career was not distinguished by particular brilliance. In the third book of The Prelude Wordsworth recorded his reactions to life at Cambridge and his changing attitude toward his studies. During his last summer as an undergraduate, he and his college friend Robert Jones—much influenced by William Coxe’s Sketches of the Natural, Civil, and Political State of Swisserland (1779)—decided to make a tour of the Alps, departing from Dover on July 13, 1790.

Though Wordsworth, encouraged by his headmaster William Taylor, had been composing verse since his days at Hawkshead Grammar School, his poetic career begins with this first trip to France and Switzerland. During this period he also formed his early political opinions—especially his hatred of tyranny. These opinions would be profoundly transformed over the coming years but never completely abandoned. Wordsworth was intoxicated by the combination of revolutionary fervor he found in France—he and Jones arrived on the first anniversary of the storming of the Bastille—and by the impressive natural beauty of the countryside and mountains. Returning to England in October, Wordsworth was awarded a pass degree from Cambridge in January 1791, spent several months in London, and then traveled to Jones’s parents’ home in North Wales. During 1791 Wordsworth’s interest in both poetry and politics gained in sophistication, as natural sensitivity strengthened his perceptions of the natural and social scenes he encountered.

Wordsworth’s passion for democracy, as is clear in his “Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff” (also called “Apology for the French Revolution”), is the result of his two youthful trips to France. In November 1791 Wordsworth returned to France, where he attended sessions of the National Assembly and the Jacobin Club. In December he met and fell in love with Annette Vallon, and at the beginning of 1792 he became the close friend of an intellectual and philosophical army officer, Michel Beaupuy, with whom he discussed politics. Wordsworth had been an instinctive democrat since childhood, and his experiences in revolutionary France strengthened and developed his convictions. His sympathy for ordinary people would remain with Wordsworth even after his revolutionary fervor had been replaced with the “softened feudalism” he endorsed in his Two Addresses to the Freeholders of Westmoreland in 1818.

While still in France, Wordsworth began work on the first extended poetic efforts of his maturity, Descriptive Sketches , which was published in 1793, after the appearance of a poem written at Cambridge, An Evening Walk (1793). Having exhausted his money, he left France in early December 1792 before Annette Vallon gave birth to his child Caroline. Back in England, the young radical cast about for a suitable career. As a fervent democrat, he had serious reservations about “vegetating in a paltry curacy,” though he had written to his friend William Matthews in May 1792 that he intended to be ordained the following winter or spring. Perhaps this plan was why he was reading sermons early in 1793, when he came across a sermon by Richard Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, on “the Wisdom and Goodness of God” in making both rich and poor, with an appendix denouncing the French Revolution. His democratic sympathies aroused, he spent several weeks in February and March working on a reply.

By this time, his relationship with Annette Vallon had become known to his English relatives, and any further opportunity of entering the Church was foreclosed. In any case Wordsworth had been reading atheist William Godwin’s recently published Political Justice (1793), and had come powerfully under its sway. “A Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff” is the youthful poet and democrat’s indignant reply to the forces of darkness, repression, and monarchy. Its prose shares something of the revolutionary clarity of Thomas Paine’s. Wordsworth, in fact, quoted Paine in his refutation of Bishop Watson’s appendix: “If you had looked in the articles of the rights of man, you would have found your efforts superseded. Equality, without which liberty cannot exist, is to be met with in perfection in that state in which no distinctions are admitted but such as have evidently for their object the general good.” Just how radical Wordsworth’s political beliefs were during this period can be judged from other passages in this “Letter”: “At a period big with the fate of the human race, I am sorry that you attach so much importance to the personal sufferings of the late royal martyr . ... You wish it to be supposed that you are one of those who are unpersuaded of the guilt of Louis XVI. If you had attended to the history of the French revolution as minutely as its importance demands, so far from stopping to bewail his death, you would rather have regretted that the blind fondness of his people had placed a human being in that monstrous situation. ...”

“A Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff” is remarkable partly because Wordsworth seems to have begun relinquishing its tenets almost as soon as he had composed them. Though he remained for the time being a strong supporter of the French Revolution, the poetic side of Wordsworth’s personality began asserting itself, causing the poet to reexamine, between 1793 and 1796, his adherence to Godwin’s rationalistic model of human behavior, upon which Wordsworth’s republicanism was largely founded. Whether “A Letter to Bishop the of Llandaff” remained unpublished through caution or circumstance is not clear. As Wordsworth turned his attention to poetry, he developed, through the process of poetic composition, his own theory of human nature, one that had very little to do with Godwin’s rationalism. During this period Wordsworth met another radical young man with literary aspirations, Samuel Taylor Coleridge .

In 1794 and 1795 Wordsworth divided his time between London and the Lake Country. In September 1795 William and Dorothy Wordsworth settled at Racedown Lodge in Dorset, where they would live for two years. In The Prelude Wordsworth wrote that his sister “Maintained a saving intercourse / With my true self,” and “preserved me still / A poet.” At Racedown Wordsworth composed the tragedy The Borderers , a tragedy in which he came fully to terms with Godwin’s philosophy, finally rejecting it as an insufficiently rich approach to life for a poet. Then Wordsworth for the first time found his mature poetic voice, writing The Ruined Cottage , which would be published in 1814 as part of The Excursion , itself conceived as one part of a masterwork, The Recluse , which was to worry Wordsworth throughout his life, a poem proposed to him by Coleridge and planned as a full statement of the two poets’ emerging philosophy of life.

In 1797, to be closer to Coleridge, the Wordsworths moved to Alfoxden House, near the village of Nether Stowey. Because of the odd habits of the household—especially their walking over the countryside at all hours—the local population suspected that the Wordsworths and their visitors were French spies, and a government agent was actually dispatched to keep an eye on them. The years between 1797 and 1800 mark the period of Wordsworth and Coleridge’s close collaboration, and also the beginning of Wordsworth’s mature poetic career. Wordsworth wrote the poems that would go into the 1798 and 1800 editions of Lyrical Ballads —poems such as “Tintern Abbey,” “Expostulation and Reply,” “ The Tables Turned ,” “Goody Blake and Harry Gill,” and “Michael.” During 1798 Wordsworth also worked on a piece of prose setting out his evolving ideas on justice and morality. Called the “Essay on Morals” by later editors, it was set aside and never finished. Wordsworth seems to have been attempting to work out and justify his changing political and social ideas—ideas that had begun to develop intuitively during the process of poetic composition. The poet in Wordsworth was beginning to dominate the democrat, and the poet found a political philosophy based on power, violence, and reason anathema. 

In September 1798 the Wordsworths set off for Germany with Coleridge, returning separately, after some disagreements, in May 1799. In Germany Wordsworth continued to write poems, and when he returned to England he began to prepare a new edition of Lyrical Ballads . The second edition—that of 1800—included an extended preface by Wordsworth, explaining his reasons for choosing to write as he had and setting out a personal poetics that has remained influential and controversial to the present day. For Victorian readers such as Matthew Arnold, who tended to venerate Wordsworth, the preface was a fount of wisdom; but the modernists were deeply suspicious of Wordsworth’s reliance on feeling : poets such as T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, while they could accept the strictures on poetic diction, found the underlying theory unacceptable. Subsequent critics have focused on the literary and historical sources of Wordsworth’s ideas, demonstrating that, while the poet certainly reinvented English poetic diction, his theories were deeply rooted in the practice of earlier poets, especially John Milton. This preface, Wordsworth’s only extended statement of his poetics, has become the source of many of the commonplaces and controversies of poetic theory and criticism. For Wordsworth, poetry, which should be written in “the real language of men,” is nevertheless “the spontaneous overflow of feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.”

The “Preface to Lyrical Ballads” (revised and expanded many times for later editions) is not a systematic poetics, but a partly polemical, partly pedantic, and still problematic statement of Wordsworth’s beliefs about poetry and poetic language. The preface in all its versions is highly discursive, the poet “thinking aloud” in an attempt to formulate ideas about poetry based on poems he has already written. It is important to remember when reading the preface that it both chronologically and logically follows the composition of most of the poems. The two central ideas of the preface are the need for reforming poetic diction—which, according to Wordsworth, had become far too artificial—and the role of the poet in society, which Wordsworth saw as having become too marginal. He had also come to the conclusion that the troubles of society were specifically urban in nature. This view finds eloquent expression in Wordsworth’s most powerful early poem, “ Tintern Abbey .” Thinking of the way in which his memories of the Wye River valley had sustained him, Wordsworth wrote:

The poem concludes with a meditation on the power of nature to prevail against the false and superficial “dreary intercourse of daily life” that Wordsworth associated with city life, especially literary life in London. In the preface, Wordsworth characterized those forces as acting against the elevation of mind in which the poet specializes, and he identified them with urban life:

For a multitude of causes unknown to former times are now acting with combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and unfitting it for all voluntary exertion to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor. The most effective of these causes are the great national events which are daily taking place, and the encreasing accumulation of men in cities, where the uniformity of their occupations produces a craving for extraordinary incident which the rapid communication of intelligence hourly gratifies. To this tendency of life and manners the literature of the atrical exhibitions of the country have conformed themselves. The invaluable works of our elder writers, I had almost said the works of Shakespear and Milton, are driven into neglect by frantic novels, sickly and stupid German Tragedies, and deluges of idle and extravagent stories in verse.

In a letter to Catherine Clarkson years later (June 4, 1812), Wordsworth blamed not social institutions but people themselves for the ills of society: “As to public affairs; they are most alarming ... The [Prince Regent] seems neither respected or beloved; and the lower orders have been for upwards of thirty years accumulating in pestilential masses of ignorant population; the effects now begin to show themselves. ...” These words are remarkable in light of Wordsworth’s early identification with just such “masses of population,” though it is evident even in the preface that he had already begun to represent “the lower orders” as fundamentally removed from the affairs of both state and the arts. This belief is extraordinary considering the faith he had expressed in “the people” in “A Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff.”

Even before the publication of the first edition in 1798, Wordsworth was certainly aware that the poems in Lyrical Ballads were different from the conventional verse of the day, and he knew that fashionable reviewers would probably dismiss them as insufficiently elevated in tone and subject matter. They did, with a vengeance, and a good part of Wordsworth’s additions to the preface for the 1802 edition are attempts to answer his critics. But even in the 1800 version of the preface Wordsworth made an explicit connection between a plain poetic diction and a proper relationship to nature and society; that is, he makes the issue of a poetic diction a moral one, and his critique of a sonnet by Thomas Gray is an ethical demonstration as well as an example of literary criticism directed by one generation against the preceding one. As Wordsworth revised the preface for later editions, the changes reflected Wordsworth’s increasingly conservative views.

By December 1799 William and Dorothy Wordsworth were living in Dove Cottage, at Town End, Grasmere. In May 1802 Sir James Lowther, Earl of Lonsdale, died, and, though the litigation over his debt to the estate of Wordsworth’s father had not been settled, his heir, Sir William Lowther, agreed to pay the Wordsworth children the entire sum. With financial prospects, Wordsworth married Mary Hutchinson on October 2, 1802. The settlement helped to support a growing family and also allowed the Wordsworths to continue their generosity to various friends and men of letters, many of whom came to stay at Dove Cottage, sometimes for months on end. The death of the earl of Lonsdale also marked the beginning of a close economic and political relationship between William Wordsworth and Sir William Lowther (who became earl of Lonsdale in 1807) that would have a significant effect on the poet’s political philosophy in the years to come.

Wordsworth continued to write poetry with energy and passion over the next several years, and while fashionable critics such as Francis Jeffrey continued to snipe, his reputation and finances slowly improved. During these years he composed “ The Solitary Reaper ,” “ Resolution and Independence ,” and “ Ode: Intimations of Immortality ,” perhaps the greatest lyrics of his maturity. In these poems Wordsworth presents a fully developed, yet morally flexible, picture of the relationship between human beings and the natural world. Influenced by Neoplatonism, these poems also prepare the way for Wordsworth’s return to conventional religious belief. In 1805 Wordsworth completed a massive revision of the “poem to Coleridge” that would be published, after undergoing periodic adjustment and revision, after the poet’s death in 1850. Many critics believe that the “1805 Prelude,” as it has come to be called, is Wordsworth’s greatest poetic achievement.

In May 1808, his “great decade” behind him, Wordsworth moved with his family to Allan Bank, a larger house in Grasmere. Thomas De Quincy took over Dove Cottage. Evidence of a decisive turn in Wordsworth’s social and political views—and, by extension, his poetical views as well—during this period is to be found in The Convention of Cintra (1809), an extended political tract concerning the British expedition to Portugal to fight against Napoleon’s forces encamped on the Spanish peninsula. In 1793 Wordsworth had written in his “Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff,” “In France royalty is no more.” In 1808 he might have said “In William Wordsworth, Jacobinism is no more.” In place of Wordsworth’s early belief in equality, The Convention of Cintra presents a narrowly patriotic and nationalist view of European politics and a profoundly reactionary political philosophy expressed in tortured rhetoric.

Throughout The Convention of Cintra Wordsworth seems to have given himself over to rigid abstractions such as Patriotism, Justice, and Power, and it is possible to argue that the diminution of Wordsworth’s poetic power dates from this period. If “A Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff” was derivative of Godwin, The Convention of Cintra is certainly derivative of Edmund Burke. When Henry Crabb Robinson showed a copy of Wordsworth’s pamphlet to Thomas Quayle, Quayle said that Wordsworth’s style resembled the worst of Burke’s. The radical republican of 1793 has by this point adopted not only Burke’s style but the essence of his thought as well. The transformation of his ideas seems to have cost Wordsworth his clarity of language, so apparent in “A Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff,” and even the “Preface to Lyrical Ballads,” which, though structurally complicated, is never obscure in the way of The Convention of Cintra .

On Wednesday evening, December 2, 1812, William Wordsworth wrote to his friend Robert Southey about the death of Thomas Wordsworth, the poet’s six-year-old son, the previous day. The simplicity and directness of this letter communicate Wordsworth’s sorrow with great power and integrity:

Symptoms of the measles appeared upon my Son Thomas last Thursday; he was most favorable held till Tuesday, between 10 and 11 at that hour was particularly lightsome and comfortable; without any assignable cause a sudden change took place, an inflammation had commenced on the lungs which it was impossible to check and the sweet Innocent yielded up his soul to God before six in the evening. He did not appear to suffer much in body, but I fear something in mind as he was of an age to have thought much upon death a subject to which his mind was daily led by the grave of his Sister.

Thomas was the second child of William and Mary Wordsworth to die in childhood. Catherine had died the previous June, a few months before her fourth birthday.

In late 1812 Lord Lonsdale proposed that he provide 100 pounds a year for the support of Wordsworth and his family until a salaried position became available. Wordsworth was at first somewhat reluctant to accept the patronage, but he accepted, and on January  8, 1813 he wrote to acknowledge receipt of payment. He was relieved when the post of Distributor of Stamps was offered to him a few months later. With this assurance of economic security, the Wordsworths moved to Rydal Mount, the poet’s final home, in May 1813. Lonsdale’s gift and patronage marked a deepening of the relations between the aristocratic earl and the formerly radical republican and supporter of revolution in France and democracy in England. Politically, Wordsworth had completely transformed himself; poetically, he repeated earlier formulas and began rearranging his poems in a seemingly infinite sequence of thematically organized volumes.

Other than letters and miscellaneous notes, Wordsworth’s political prose writings conclude with Two Addresses to the Freeholders of Westmoreland (1818). These have been described by one critic as “nearly unreadable,” but they are crucial to an understanding of Wordsworth’s entanglement in local and national politics. As Distributor of Stamps, Wordsworth should not have engaged in electioneering, but his two addresses back the local nobility in no uncertain terms. By this time, Wordsworth had come to believe that the only way to preserve the virtues celebrated in “Michael” and other early poems was to maintain the traditional social orders of English society. Fully the Tory mouthpiece, Wordsworth argued that the Whigs had put too much faith in human nature, as they (and he) did at the commencement of the French Revolution. The Two Addresses praise Edmund Burke for just those values Wordsworth had earlier excoriated. By this time Wordsworth had fully incorporated Burke’s system of beliefs into his own, and several passages of the 1850 Prelude are redolent with Burkean sentimental and political philosophy.

Wordsworth’s last major work in prose represents a return to his earliest interest in the land and scenery of the English Lake District. In 1810 artist Joseph Wilkinson published Select Views in Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Lancashire , with an introduction by Wordsworth. In 1822 Wordsworth returned to his introduction, expanding it into a book most commonly known as A Guide through the District of the Lakes , which continues to be republished in a variety of editions. Wordsworth’s love of his native region is evident in the Guide , which remains useful for the reader of Wordsworth’s poetry as well as for the tourist of the Lake District.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge died in 1834, and, though the men had grown apart, Wordsworth continued to pay particular attention to Coleridge’s erratic first son, Hartley, a minor poet and biographer who haunted the Lake District on “pot house wanderings,” to use Wordsworth’s memorable phrase. Hartley, the child addressed in Coleridge’s “Frost at Midnight” and Wordsworth’s “To H.C. Six Years Old,” as well as the basis for the child represented in the Immortality Ode, was a feckless figure beloved by the local farmers, and Wordsworth took a special interest in seeing to his welfare. Hartley died in 1849, only a few months before Wordsworth, who instructed that his friend’s son be buried in the Wordsworth plot in Grasmere Churchyard. “He would have wished it,” said Wordsworth.

In 1843 Wordsworth was named poet laureate of England, though by this time he had for the most part quit composing verse. He revised and rearranged his poems, published various editions, and entertained literary guests and friends. When he died in 1850, he had for some years been venerated as a sage, his most ardent detractors glossing over the radical origins of his poetics and politics.

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William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, Cumbria, England, on April 7, 1770. Wordsworth’s mother died when he was eight—this experience shapes much of his later work. Wordsworth attended Hawkshead Grammar School, where his love of poetry was firmly established and, it is believed, where he made his first attempts at verse. While he was at Hawkshead, Wordsworth’s father died leaving him and his four siblings orphans. After Hawkshead, Wordsworth studied at St. John’s College in Cambridge and, before his final semester, he set out on a walking tour of Europe—an experience that influenced both his poetry and his political sensibilities. While touring Europe, Wordsworth came into contact with the French Revolution. This experience, as well as a subsequent period living in France, brought about Wordsworth’s interest and sympathy for the life, troubles, and speech of the “common man.” These issues proved to be of the utmost importance to Wordsworth’s work. Wordsworth’s earliest poetry was published in 1793 in the collections An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches . While living in France, Wordsworth conceived a daughter, Caroline, out of wedlock; he left France, however, before she was born. In 1802, he returned to France with his sister on a four-week visit to meet Caroline. Later that year, he married Mary Hutchinson, a childhood friend, and they had five children together. In 1812, while living in Grasmere, two of their children—Catherine and John—died.

Equally important in the poetic life of Wordsworth was his 1795 meeting with the poet  Samuel Taylor Coleridge . It was with Coleridge that Wordsworth published the famous Lyrical Ballads  (J. & A. Arch) in 1798. While the poems themselves are some of the most influential in Western literature, it is the preface to the second edition that remains one of the most important testaments to a poet’s views on both his craft and his place in the world. In the preface Wordsworth writes on the need for “common speech” within poems and argues against the hierarchy of the period which valued epic poetry above the lyric.

Wordsworth’s most famous work, The Prelude (Edward Moxon, 1850), is considered by many to be the crowning achievement of English Romanticism . The poem, revised numerous times, chronicles the spiritual life of the poet and marks the birth of a new genre of poetry. Although Wordsworth worked on The Prelude throughout his life, the poem was published posthumously. Wordsworth spent his final years settled at Rydal Mount in England, traveling, and continuing his outdoor excursions. Devastated by the death of his daughter, Dora, in 1847, Wordsworth seemingly lost his will to compose poems.

William Wordsworth died at Rydal Mount on April 23, 1850, leaving his wife, Mary, to publish The Prelude three months later.

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• What was William Wordsworth’s childhood like?
• What did William Wordsworth write?

William Wordsworth: Facts & Related Content

The Information Architects maintain a master list of the topics included in the corpus of  Encyclopædia Britannica , and create and manage the relationships between them.

Did You Know?

• Wordsworth regretted his inability to fluently read modern poetic languages such as Italian and Spanish.
• Wordsworth wrote a guidebook to the region of his home called, "A Guide through the District of the Lakes."
• Three months after his death, Wordsworth's wife Mary published "The Prelude".

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William Wordsworth: Biography

Glenn everett , associate professor of english, university of tennessee at martin.

Victorian Web Home —> Some Pre-Victorian Authors —> British Romanticism —> William Wordsworth ]

The Poet's birthplace and childhood home — the Wordsworth House, Cockermouth

William Wordsworth was born April 7, 1770, in Cockermouth, Cumberland, to John and Anne (Cookson) Wordsworth, the second of their five children. His father was law agent and rent collector for Lord Lonsdale, and the family was fairly well off. After his mother's death in 1778 he was sent to Hawkshead Grammar School, near Windermere; in 1787 he went up to St. John's College, Cambridge . He enjoyed hiking: during the "long" (i.e., summer) vacation of 1788 he tramped around Cumberland county; two years later went on a walking tour of France, Switzerland, and Germany; and in 1791, after graduation, trekked through Wales.

His enthusiasm for the French Revolution took him to France again in 1791, where he had an affair with Annette Vallon, who bore him an illegitimate daughter, Caroline, in 1792. Having run out of money, Wordsworth returned to England the following year, and the Anglo-French war, following the Reign of Terror, prevented his return for nine years.

In 1794 he was reunited with his sister Dorothy, who became his companion, close friend, moral support, and housekeeper until her physical and mental decline in the 1830s. The next year he met Coleridge , and the three of them grew very close, the two men meeting daily in 1797-98 to talk about poetry and to plan Lyrical Ballads , which came out in 1798. The three friends travelled to Germany that fall, a trip that produced intellectual stimulation for Coleridge and homesickness for Wordsworth. After their return, William and Dorothy settled in his beloved Lake district , near Grasmere.

The Peace of Amiens in 1802 allowed Wordsworth and his sister to visit France again to see Annette and Caroline. They arrived at a mutually agreeable settlement, and a few months later, after receiving an inheritance owed by Lord Lonsdale since John Wordsworth's death in 1783, William married Mary Hutchinson. By 1810 they had five children, but their happiness was tempered by the loss at sea of William's brother John (1805), the alienation from Coleridge in 1810, and the death of two children in 1812. In 1813 Wordsworth received an appointment as Distributor of Stamps for Westmorland, and the £400 per year which went with this post made him financially secure. The whole family, which included Dorothy, moved to Rydal Mount, between Grasmere and Rydal Water).

Wordsworth's literary career began with Descriptive Sketches (1793) and reached an early climax before the turn of the century, with Lyrical Ballads . His powers peaked with Poems in Two Volumes (1807), and his reputation continued to grow; even his harshest reviewers recognized his popularity and the originality.

The important later works were well under way. His success with shorter forms made him the more eager to succeed with longer, specifically with a long, three-part "philosophical poem, containing views of Man, Nature, and Society, . . having for its principal subject the sensations and opinions of a poet living in retirement." The 17,000 lines which were eventually published made up only a part of this mammoth project. The second section, The Excursion , was completed (pub. 1814), as was the first book of the first part, The Recluse . During his lifetime he refused to print The Prelude , which he had completed by 1805, because he thought it was unprecedented for a poet to talk as much about himself — unless he could put it in its proper setting, which was as an introduction to the complete three-part Recluse .

William and Mary Wordsworth's Grave

Inspiration gradually failed him for this project, and he spent much of his later life revising The Prelude . Critics quarrel about which version is better, the 1805 or the 1850, but agree that in either case it is the most successful blank verse epic since Paradise Lost .

Finally fully reconciled to Coleridge, the two of them toured the Rhineland in 1828. Durham University granted him an honorary Doctor of Civil Law degree in 1838, and Oxford conferred the same honor the next year. When Robert Southey died in 1843, Wordsworth was named Poet Laureate. He died in 1850, and his wife published the much-revised Prelude that summer.

Created 1988; incorporated in the Victorian Web July 2000

Poet Biographies

The Romantic and Natural World of William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth, one of the most celebrated poets of the Romantic era, was a master of capturing the beauty and power of nature in his works. His famous poems continue to inspire readers and nature enthusiasts alike, making Wordsworth a timeless literary figure.

Wordsworth was a leading figure in the Romantic poetry movement that focused on life’s daily experience in his writing. He is known for his fascination with the natural world and explores the emotional response one might have from it. His philosophy surrounds the notion that nature can be a restorative and a great source of inspiration. His writing helped propel English literature for years after his death and is widely studied and admired to this day. 

Wordsworth’s poetry was controversial in his own time, as some critics found his emphasis on emotion and the individual to be too subjective and lacking in formal structure.

Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility William Wordsworth Quote

About William Wordsworth

• 1 Early Life
• 2 Writing Career 
• 3 Romantic Poetry
• 4 Personal Life and Relationships 
• 5 Death and The Prelude
• 6 Influence from other Poets

Wordsworth was the second of five children born to parents John Wordsworth and Ann Cookson in the now-historic Wordsworth House in Cockermouth, Cumberland, or modern Cumbria. The home is centered in the Lake District, the area that Wordsworth and many of his contemporaries came to be associated with. He also spent part of his youth in Penrith. He was born a year before his sister, Dorothy Wordsworth. He maintained a strong relationship with her throughout his life. He wrote several poems with his sister in mind or as a character in a broader setting . These include  ‘ To My Sister. ’

William Wordsworth’s father was a legal representative and was often away from home. He died in 1783, having remained distant from his son throughout his life. Despite this, there is evidence to suggest that John Wordsworth encouraged his son to read poems by John Milton ,  Edmund Spenser , and more. His library was an essential resource in Wordsworth’s development. His mother, Ann, died in 1778, a few years before his father.

After his mother’s death, William’s father sent him away to Hawkshead Grammar School and sent his sister to live in Yorkshire with some relatives. Unfortunately, due to this, the two siblings did not end up seeing each other again for nine years.

Writing Career  

Wordsworth’s poetry  was first published in  The European Magazine  in 1787. This same year he started at St. Johns College, Cambridge, where he received a BA in 1791. Around this same period of time, he went on a walking tour of Europe. His first complete poetic publication appeared in 1793 and was titled An Evening Walk. It was followed that same year by  Descriptive Sketches.

A few years later, he met fellow poet  Samuel Taylor Coleridge  with whom he’d publish his best-known collection,  Lyrical Ballads .  It appeared in 1798 and is today considered to be the start of the Romantic period in English literature. It included poems like ‘ Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey ,’ ‘ Lines Written in Early Spring ,’  and  ‘ We are Seven .’  Coleridge famously contributed  ‘ The Rime of the Ancient Mariner .’  The poems in this collection are some of the most important and widely read in the English language.

When the second edition was published two years later, Wordsworth was the only one listed as a contributor. He sought, as explained through the preface, to create poetry that used language “really used by men” and avoided the poetic diction of the previous periods. He famously defined poetry as:

the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.

Around the same period that William Wordsworth and Coleridge published the first edition of  Lyrical Ballads,  the two traveled to Germany along with Dorothy Wordsworth. Later, Wordsworth started work on ‘ The Prelude,’  commonly considered to be his masterpiece, while living with his sister in Goslar. During this period, Wordsworth wrote a great number of poems ranging in  themes from death to separation . Additionally, he, along with Coleridge,  Robert Southey , and several other poets, became known as the Lake Poets .

In 1807, Coleridge published  Poems, in Two Volumes.  This collection included  ‘ Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood .’  Unfortunately, the collection did not do as well as  Lyrical Ballads,  the volume for which he’s most commonly cited today.

In 1814, he published ‘ The Excursion ’, intended as the second part of ‘ The Recluse,’  a long philosophical poem. Some believe that Wordsworth’s work declined during this period in part due to the considerable success he’d achieved.

Romantic Poetry

William Wordsworth was one of the greatest romantic poets of all time. One of the most creative spells in his career was from 1799 to 1808, when he moved to Grasmere, on the edge of Lake District. This period of his life has been described as a time of ‘high thinking,’ where he lived with his sister Dorothy. By consistently living in such a location, full of nature, it is easy to see how his poetic style , based on the relationship between human beings and nature, developed fully. 

An example of his fascination with nature is seen in his poem ‘ I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud ,’ where he describes the bliss of solitude in combination with nature. It also shows the synergistic relationship that we have with our environment.

Personal Life and Relationships  

In the early 1790s, William Wordsworth fell in love with Annette Vallon, a French woman who gave birth to their daughter, Caroline, in 1792. He met her after visiting the country during the period of the French Revolution. It is said that he became captivated by the Republican movement and revolutionary France as a whole. However, he was forced to return to England without her the following year but continued to support her and their child to the best of his abilities as time passed. Caroline married in 1816, and Wordsworth settled £30 a year on her for the next twenty years.

When Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy returned to France to see Annette in the early 1800s, he broke to news to her that he’d be marrying Mary Hutchinson, a childhood friend. Dorothy lived with the couple and became close friends with Mary. Together, Mary and William Wordsworth had five children; they were John, Dora, Thomas, Catherine, and William. Three of the five died before Mary and William did.

Coleridge and Wordsworth’s relationship fell apart in 1810 due to Coleridge’s opium addiction. Unfortunately, two years later, Wordsworth’s daughter Catherine died at three years old, and then his son Thomas died at six years old only six months later. His daughter Dora died in 1847. This was around the same time that Wordsworth stopped writing.

Wordsworth, Mary, and Dorothy moved to Rydal Mount, Ambleside, in 1813, where the poet spent the rest of his life. He mended his relationship with Coleridge in 1828, six years before the latter’s death. This was the same year that their close friend  Charles Lamb , brother to  Mary Lamb , also died.

In 1843, Wordsworth was named  Poet Laureate of the UK , an honor he initially declined due to his age. Later, he accepted when the prime minister assured him that he’d have to do nothing in the role. He was succeeded by  Alfred Lord Tennyson  in the year of his death.

Death and  The Prelude

William Wordsworth died on April 23rd, 1850, at his home in Rydal Mount from complications associated with pleurisy. His poem, ‘ The Prelude,’ was published posthumously by his wife. It is today considered to be the most important achievement of English Romanticism . Read an extract from ‘The Prelude,’ titled ‘ Boat Stealing,’ here.

Influence from other Poets

William Wordsworth, like many poets before him, was influenced by other writers and brought elements of their work into his. Some of his greatest influences were Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Milton , William Shakespeare , and, as previously discussed, his close friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge . 

Although Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a philosopher, his ideas ran very close to those of Wordsworth. Rousseau’s focus on the goodness of nature, its inspirational power, and how man is inherently good connected with Wordsworth. This philosophy subsequently made up a large part of his thematic direction. 

Wordsworth had a great admiration for John Milton and his use of words, language, and incredible ability to create characters of great complexity. Similarly, William Shakespeare’s poetry had an impact on Wordsworth, again with his generation of characters and capability with powerful imagery .

William Wordsworth is best known for his romantic, emotional poetry, which pays particular attention to the connection between the common man and the natural world. The 18th-century poet wrote a number of romantic poems that went on to inspire many poets after him.

Arguably, William Wordsworth’s most famous poem is ‘ I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud ‘. An extract of his magnum opus, ‘ The Prelude ,’ the poem is centered around the positive impact that the natural world can have on the mood of a person. But by simply walking in a field of daffodils, he described how his view of the world shifted.

William Wordsworth is actually considered by many scholars and poetry lovers to be the master of Romantic Poetry . His work expertly depicts human emotion, the natural world, and our synergistic relationship with it.

It was said that William Wordsworth suffered from a stomach ailment that eventually halted his poetry altogether in 1801. He would experience chronic indigestion and heartburn that would actually make it painful for him to sit down and write.

William Wordsworth succumbed to a case of pleurisy on April 23rd, 1850, at his home in Grasmere. One of his greatest-ever literary works, ‘ The Prelude ,’ which he had spent over 50 years working on, was released posthumously and later defined his genius for years to come.

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William Wordsworth

Biography of William Wordsworth

On April 7, 1770, William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, Cumbria, England. Wordsworth’s mother died when he was eight—this experience shapes much of his later work. Wordsworth attended Hawkshead Grammar School, where his love of poetry was firmly established and, it is believed, he made his first attempts at verse. While he was at Hawkshead, Wordsworth’s father died leaving him and his four siblings orphans. After Hawkshead, Wordsworth studied at St. John’s College in Cambridge and before his final semester, he set out on a walking tour of Europe, an experience that influenced both his poetry and his political sensibilities. While touring Europe, Wordsworth came into contact with the French Revolution. This experience as well as a subsequent period living in France, brought about Wordsworth’s interest and sympathy for the life, troubles, and speech of the “common man.” These issues proved to be of the utmost importance to Wordsworth’s work. Wordsworth’s earliest poetry was published in 1793 in the collections An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches. While living in France, Wordsworth conceived a daughter, Caroline, out of wedlock; he left France, however, before she was born. In 1802, he returned to France with his sister on a four-week visit to meet Caroline. Later that year, he married Mary Hutchinson, a childhood friend, and they had five children together. In 1812, while living in Grasmere, two of their children—Catherine and John—died.

Equally important in the poetic life of Wordsworth was his 1795 meeting with the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It was with Coleridge that Wordsworth published the famous Lyrical Ballads in 1798. While the poems themselves are some of the most influential in Western literature, it is the preface to the second edition that remains one of the most important testaments to a poet’s views on both his craft and his place in the world. In the preface Wordsworth writes on the need for “common speech” within poems and argues against the hierarchy of the period which valued epic poetry above the lyric.

Wordsworth’s most famous work, The Prelude (1850), is considered by many to be the crowning achievement of English romanticism. The poem, revised numerous times, chronicles the spiritual life of the poet and marks the birth of a new genre of poetry. Although Wordsworth worked on The Prelude throughout his life, the poem was published posthumously. Wordsworth spent his final years settled at Rydal Mount in England, travelling and continuing his outdoor excursions. Devastated by the death of his daughter Dora in 1847, Wordsworth seemingly lost his will to compose poems. William Wordsworth died at Rydal Mount on April 23, 1850, leaving his wife Mary to publish The Prelude three months later.

Poems by William Wordsworth

• "Why art thou silent! Is thy love a plant"
• A Complaint
• A Poet! He Hath Put his Heart to School
• A Slumber did my Spirit Seal
• Character of the Happy Warrior
• Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802
• Elegiac Stanzas Suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle in a Storm, Painted by Sir George Beaumont
• Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg
• I Travelled among Unknown Men
• I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
• Influence of Natural Objects in Calling Forth and Strengthening the Imagination in Boyhood and Early Youth
• Inside of King's College Chapel, Cambridge
• It is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free
• It is not to be Thought of
• Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798
• Lines Written in Early Spring
• London, 1802
• Most Sweet it is
• November, 1806
• Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent’s Narrow Room
• October, 1803
• Ode to Duty
• Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
• On the Departure of Sir Walter Scott from Abbotsford, for Naples
• On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic
• Resolution and Independence
• Scorn not the Sonnet
• September, 1819
• She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways
• She Was a Phantom of Delight
• Simon Lee: The Old Huntsman
• Sonnets from The River Duddon: After-Thought
• Surprised by Joy
• The French Revolution as It Appeared to Enthusiasts at Its Commencement
• The Green Linnet
• The Power of Armies is a Visible Thing
• The Reverie of Poor Susan
• The Simplon Pass
• The Solitary Reaper
• The Tables Turned
• The World Is Too Much With Us
• There was a Boy
• Three Years She Grew
• To a Highland Girl
• To a Skylark
• To the Cuckoo
• We Are Seven
• Written in London. September, 1802
• Yarrow Revisited
• Yarrow Unvisited
• Yarrow Visited. September, 1814

English History

William Wordsworth

Born: April 7, 1770, Cockermouth, England Died: April 23, 1850 (aged 80), Rydal, England Years Active: 1973—1850 Notable Works: Lyrical Ballads (1667), The Prelude (1644)

William Wordsworth (7 April 1770 – 23 April 1850) was an English Romantic poet, best known for Lyrical Ballads (1667), which he wrote with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He and Coleridge helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature.

Wordsworth is best known for The Prelude, which is a semi-autobiographical poem of his early years that he revised and expanded a number of times. It was not published during his lifetime, instead published a year after his death by his wife.

Before being published, it was known as “the poem to Coleridge”, which shows just how close the two poets were.

Wordsworth lived until he was eighty years old, passing away in 1850 from pleurisy. From 1843 until his death, he was Poet Laureate .

William Wordsworth – Early Life

William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 in Cockermouth to John Wordsworth, a legal agent for James Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale and Collector of Customs at Whitehaven, and his wife, Ann Cookson.

John was the son of Richard Wordsworth, a land owner who served as a legal agent to the Lowther family and, like his father, became a legal agent for James Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale and was made Bailiff and Recorder for Cockermouth and Coroner for the Seigniory of Millom. Anne was the daughter of Wordsworth Cookson, a linen-draper, and Dorothy Crackanthorpe, daughter of a gentry family in Westmorland.

In 1766, John and Ann married when they were 26 and 18, respectively. John used his connections with the Lowther family to move into a large mansion in the small town of Cockermouth, Cumbria, in the Lake District.

Wordsworth was the second of five children that John and Ann had. His eldest brother was Robert and became a lawyer and his sister, the poet and diarist Dorothy, was born the year after him. John was born after Dorothy and became a poet until he died in a shipwreck in 1805, and the youngest sibling was Christopher, who became a scholar and eventually Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.

Wordsworth did not have a close relationship with his father, although he did teach him poetry, including that of Milton, Shakespeare and Spenser.

Wordsworth also spent time reading in Cockermouth, at his mother’s parents home in Penrith, particularly in the years of 1775—1777, where he was exposed to the moors and was influenced by his experience with the landscape.

Wordsworth had trouble with his relatives, particularly his grandparents and his uncle, which turned him further towards nature to seek solace.

Wordsworth’s mother Ann died in Penrith in March 1778, possibly of pneumonia. Following this, John Wordsworth became inconsolable and sent his children away to be raised by relatives. Wordsworth was taken in by his mother’s family, while Dorothy was sent to live with Elizabeth Threlkeld, Ann’s cousin, in Halifax. She and Wordsworth did not meet again for another nine years.

Wordsworth was first taught to read by his mother and was sent to a low quality school in Cockermouth. Following his mother’s death, he was sent to a school in Penrith, which was a school for children of upper-class families. There, he was taught by Ann Birkett, who insisted on instilling in her students traditions that included pursuing both scholarly and local activities, especially the festivals around Easter, May Day and Shrove Tuesday.

At this school, Wordsworth was taught both the Bible and the Spectator, but little else. However, it was here that he met the Hutchinsons, including Mary, who would be his future wife. He did not enjoy his time at Penrith, finding his relationship with his grandparents difficult, and would spend a lot of time away from home.

He was sent to Hawkshead Grammar School, where he was finally fully able to enjoy the countryside. Most of his education at Hawkshead was mathematical, while the rest was based on teaching the classics. This is when Wordsworth gained his love for Latin literature.

While attending Hawkshead School, he boarded with Hugh and Ann Tyson in the nearby hamlet of Colthouse. The community had a strong Quaker influence, and Wordsworth rejected their fixation on praising God for a relationship with the divine that would involve a more direct interaction.

Hawkshead School had a strong relationship with St. John’s College, Cambridge University and, in October 1787, Wordsworth became an undergraduate there. In the same year, Wordsworth made his debut as a writer in 1787 when he published a sonnet in The European Magazine.

Wordsworth received his BA degree in 1791. He returned to Hawkshead for the first two summers of his time at Cambridge, and often spent later holidays on walking tours. In 1790 he went on a walking tour of Europe, during which he toured the Alps extensively, and visited nearby areas of France, Switzerland, and Italy.

France and Annette Vallon

Following his graduation, Wordsworth travelled to Revolutionary France and found a love for the Republican movement. Also while in France, he fell in love with a French woman, Annette Vallon, who gave birth to his daughter, Caroline, in 1792. However, financial problems, along with Britain’s tense relationship with France, forced him to travel back to England the following year, without Annette or Caroline.

It is often thought that he returned home because he didn’t want to marry Annette, but he continued to support her and Caroline throughout his life. The French Revolution and difficult relationship between England and France prevented Wordsworth from returning to France for a number of years, which he finally did in 1802.

The Peace of Amiens allowed him to travel to France once again, where he and his sister Dorothy visited Annette and Caroline in Calais. At this time, Caroline was now nine and Wordsworth had never seen her before the visit.

The reason for Wordsworth’s visit was to tell Annette about his upcoming marriage to Mary Hutchinson. Mary felt as if Wordsworth should do more for Caroline, and so, in 1816, when Caroline married, Wordsworth settled £30 a year on her (equivalent to £2,313 as of 2019). These payments continued until 1835, when they were replaced by a capital settlement

First Publication and Lyrical Ballads

In 1793, Wordsworth’s first poetry was published. These were the collections An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches, for which he received a legacy of £900 from Raisley Calvert in 1795 so that he could pursue writing poetry.

Also in 1795, Wordsworth met Samuel Taylor Coleridge in Somerset and the two poets quickly developed a close friendship. In 1797, Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy moved to Alfoxton House, Somerset, just a few miles away from Coleridge’s home in Nether Stowey.

Together, Wordsworth and Coleridge, with insights from Dorothy, produced Lyrical Ballads (1798), an important work in the English Romantic movement. Neither Wordsworth nor Coleridge were credited as authors, but two of their most famous poems were published — Wordsworth’s poem “Tintern Abbey” and Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”.

The second edition was published in 1800 and only had Wordsworth listed as the author. This edition included a preface to the poems which is now considered a central work of Romantic literary theory. In it, Wordsworth discusses what he sees as the elements of a new type of poetry, one based on the “real language of men” and which avoids the poetic diction of much 18th-century poetry.

The fourth and final edition of Lyrical Ballads was published in 1805.

Germany and The Borderers

In 1798, Wordsworth, Dorothy and Coleridge travelled to Germany. Coleridge found the trip intellectually stimulating, but Wordsworth was homesick.

From 1795–1797, Wordsworth wrote his only play, The Borderers. This a verse tragedy set during the reign of King Henry III of England, when Englishmen in the North Country came into conflict with Scottish border reivers.

He attempted to get the play staged in November 1797, before he left for Germany, but it was rejected by Thomas Harris, the manager of the Covent Garden Theatre, who proclaimed it “impossible that the play should succeed in the representation”.

Despite his homesickness in Germany, Wordsworth began working on his autobiographical piece, which would later be titled The Prelude. He wrote a number of other famous poems in Goslar, including “The Lucy poems”.

These poems express the frustration and anxiety that Wordsworth was feeling and it is possible that the “Lucy” poems allowed Wordsworth to vent his frustration with his sister, and that they contain the subconscious desire for his sister to die.

Lake District

In the Autumn of 1799, Wordsworth and Dorothy returned to England and visited the Hutchinson family at Sockburn. When Coleridge arrived back in England, he travelled to the North with their publisher Joseph Cottle to meet Wordsworth and undertake a tour of the Lake District.

Wordsworth and Dorothy settled at Dove Cottage in Grasmere in the Lake District, this time with another poet, Robert Southey , nearby. Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey came to be known as the “Lake Poets”. Throughout this period many of Wordsworth’s poems revolved around themes of death, endurance, separation and grief.

Marriages and Children

In 1802, Lowther’s heir, William Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale, paid £4,000 to Wordsworth. This was owed to Wordsworth’s father through Lowther’s failure to pay his aide, and was the money that afforded Wordsworth the financial means to marry.

Following his visit with Dorothy to France to arrange matters with Annette, Wordsworth married his childhood friend Mary Hutchinson on 4th October 1802. Dorothy continued to live with the couple and grew close to Mary.

Mary and Wordsworth had five children, two of which died at a young age — Thomas and Catherine. Their eldest child was Rev. John Wordsworth MA (18 June 1803 – 25 July 1875) and became Vicar of Brigham, Cumberland and Rector of Plumbland, Cumberland.

He married four times and had seven children with two of his wives. Mary and Wordsworth’s daughter, Dora, was born 16 August 1804 and died 9 July 1847. The couple also had a son, William “Willy” Wordsworth (12 May 1810 – 1883), who married Fanny Graham and had four children.

The Prelude and The Recluse

In 1799, Wordsworth completed a version of his The Prelude, a biography about the growth of his mind from childhood to the current time.

It describes Wordsworth’s early, happy moments in Cockermouth with a particular focus on the River Derwent and Cockermouth Castle.

The poem transitions into the happy moments at Hawkshead, skipping over Wordsworth’s experience with his mother’s family.

Wordsworth referred to The Prelude as the “poem to Coleridge” and which he planned would serve as an appendix to a larger work called The Recluse.

In 1804 he began expanding this autobiographical work, having decided to make it a prologue rather than an appendix. He completed this work, now generally referred to as the first version of The Prelude, in 1805, but refused to publish such a personal work until he had completed the whole of The Recluse.

Poems, in Two Volumes

In 1807, Wordsworth published Poems, in Two Volumes, including “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood”. Wordsworth was known only for Lyrical Ballads at this time, and he hoped that this new collection would cement his reputation. However, the reception was not as big as he hoped it to be.

Three years later, Wordsworth and Coleridge were estranged due to Coleridge’s opium addiction. Wordsworth two young children, Thomas and Catherine, died in 1812.

Following this, in late 1812, Lord Lonsdale proposed that he provide £100 a year for the support of Wordsworth and his family until a salaried position became available. Wordsworth was at first somewhat reluctant to accept the money, but he accepted, and on January 8, 1813 he wrote to acknowledge receipt of payment.

A few months later, the post of Distributor of Stamps was offered to him and, with this assurance of economic security, the Wordsworths, including Dorothy, moved to Rydal Mount, the poet’s final home, in May 1813.

The Prospectus

In 1814, Wordsworth published The Excursion, which was the second part of the three-part work The Recluse. He published this even though he had not completed the first part or the third part, and never did.

However, he wrote a poetic Prospectus to The Recluse in which he laid out the structure and intention of the whole work, which contains some of Wordsworth’s most famous lines on the relation between the human mind and nature.

Some believe that around this time there was a decline in his work, particularly because most of the concerns that characterised his early poems (loss, death, endurance, separation and abandonment) had been resolved in his writings and his life, and he was now experiencing some success.

Later Years

In 1823, Wordsworth’s friend William Green died and this prompted Wordsworth to mend his relationship with Coleridge.

By 1828, the two were friends again, and they toured Rhineland together. Following an illness in 1829, Dorothy was disabled for the rest of her life.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge died in 1834, but Wordsworth continued to pay particular attention to Coleridge’s first son, Hartley, a minor poet and biographer.

Hartley, the child addressed in Coleridge’s “Frost at Midnight” and Wordsworth’s “To H.C. Six Years Old,” as well as the basis for the child represented in the Immortality Ode, was lazy and Wordsworth took a special interest in seeing to his welfare. Hartley died in 1849, only a few months before Wordsworth, who instructed that he be buried in the Wordsworth plot in Grasmere Churchyard.

Despite the death of loved ones, Wordsworth remained popular and had friends and acquaintances around him. In 1838, Wordsworth received an honorary doctorate in Civil Law from the University of Durham and, the following year, he was awarded the same honorary degree by the University of Oxford, when John Keble praised him as the “poet of humanity”. In 1842, the government awarded him a Civil List pension of £300 a year.

After the death of Robert Southey in 1843, Wordsworth became Poet Laureate. He initially refused the honour, saying that he was too old. However, he accepted it when the Prime Minister , Robert Peel, assured him that “you shall have nothing required of you”.

Therefore, Wordsworth became the only poet laureate to write no official verses. When his daughter Dora died suddenly in 1847 at age 42, Wordsworth’s depression forced him to give up writing new material.

Wordsworth died on 23 April 1850 at his home at Rydal Mount from an aggravated case of pleurisy. He was eighty years old. He is buried at St Oswald’s Church, Grasmere. His widow, Mary, published his lengthy autobiographical “Poem to Coleridge” as The Prelude several months after his death.

Historical Significance

While The Prelude did not interest people initially after it was published after his death, it has since become known as Wordsworth’s masterpiece. Along with Lyrical Ballads, The Prelude has ensured Wordsworth is credited one of the founders of English Romanticism and one its most central figures and important intellects.

Wordsworth’s poetry is renowned for its lyrical rhythm, his effortless use of language and the ability to compare nature to everyday life, evoking a spiritual and emotional connection with his readers that has been studied and enjoyed ever since his death.

Major Works

• “Simon Lee”
• “We are Seven”
• “Lines Written in Early Spring”
• “Expostulation and Reply”
• “The Tables Turned”
• “The Thorn”
• “Lines Composed A Few Miles above Tintern Abbey”
• Preface to the Lyrical Ballads
• “Strange fits of passion have I known”
• “She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways”
• “Three years she grew”
• “A Slumber Did my Spirit Seal”
• “I travelled among unknown men”
• “Lucy Gray”
• “The Two April Mornings”
• “The Solitary Reaper”
• “Nutting”
• “The Ruined Cottage”
• “Michael”
• “The Kitten at Play”
• “Resolution and Independence”
• “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” Also known as “Daffodils”
• “My Heart Leaps Up”
• “Ode: Intimations of Immortality”
• “Ode to Duty”
• “Elegiac Stanzas”
• “Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802”
• “London, 1802”
• “The World Is Too Much with Us”
• “French Revolution” (1810)
• Guide to the Lakes (1810)
• “To the Cuckoo”
• The Excursion (1814)
• Laodamia (1815, 1845)
• The White Doe of Rylstone (1815)
• Peter Bell (1819)
• Ecclesiastical Sonnets (1822)
• The Prelude (1850)

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William Wordsworth

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William Wordsworth, with his friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge, began the Romantic movement in British poetry with the publication of their Lyrical Ballads , turning away from the scientific rationalism of the Enlightenment, the artificial milieu of the Industrial Revolution and the aristocratic, heroic language of 18th-century poetry to dedicate his work to the imaginative embodiment of emotion in the ordinary language of the common man, seeking meaning in the sublimity of the natural environment, particularly in his beloved home, England’s Lake District.

Wordsworth’s Childhood

William Wordsworth was born in 1770 in Cockermouth, Cumbria, the scenic mountainous region of northwest England known as the Lake District. He was the second of five children, sent away to Hawkshead Grammar School after his mother died when he was 8. Five years later, his father died, and the children were sent to live with various relatives. The separation from his orphaned siblings was a severe emotional trial, and after reuniting as adults, William and his sister Dorothy lived together for the rest of their lives. In 1787, William began his studies at St. John’s College, Cambridge, with the help of his uncles.

Love and Revolution in France

While he was still a university student, Wordsworth visited France during its revolutionary period (1790) and came under the influence of its anti-aristocratic , republican ideals. After graduating the next year, he returned to continental Europe for a walking tour in the Alps and more travels in France, during which he fell in love with a French girl, Annette Vallon. Money difficulties and political troubles between France and Britain led Wordsworth to return alone to England the following year before Annette bore his illegitimate daughter, Catherine, whom he did not see until he returned to France 10 years later.

Wordsworth and Coleridge

After returning from France, Wordsworth suffered emotionally and financially, but published his first books, An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches , in 1793. In 1795 he received a small legacy, settled in Dorset with his sister Dorothy and began his most important friendship, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In 1797 he and Dorothy moved to Somerset to be closer to Coleridge. Their dialogue (really “trialogue”--Dorothy contributed her ideas as well) was poetically and philosophically fruitful, resulting in their joint publication of Lyrical Ballads (1798); its influential preface outlined the Romantic theory of poetry.

The Lake District

Wordsworth, Coleridge and Dorothy travelled to Germany in the winter after the publication of Lyrical Ballads , and on their return to England Wordsworth and his sister settled at Dove Cottage, Grasmere, in the Lake District. Here he was a neighbor to Robert Southey, who was England’s Poet Laureate before Wordsworth was appointed in 1843. Here also he was in his beloved home landscape, immortalized in so many of his poems.

The Prelude

Wordsworth’s greatest work, The Prelude , is a long, autobiographical poem which was in its earliest versions known only as “the poem to Coleridge.” Like Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass , it is a work that the poet labored over during most of his long life. Unlike Leaves of Grass , The Prelude was never published while its author lived.

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William Wordsworth biography

William Wordsworth was born on April 7, 1770, in Cockermouth, Cumberland. His father, John, was a lawyer, and he encouraged his five children to pursue learning. When Wordsworth's mother Anne died in 1778, young William was sent to attend grammar school away from home.

Wordsworth's father did not survive his wife by long, and when he died in 1783 the Wordsworth children found themselves living with two uncles who were not best pleased to receive them.

William was sent to Cambridge, and upon graduation he travelled in Europe for a time, but when the money ran out Wordsworth returned home. He published two poems, Descriptive Sketches , and An Evening Walk , which were not well received. However, friends arranged for money to allow him to concentrate on his writing.

In 1802 Wordsworth received money owed to his father, and he was financially secure enough to marry Mary Hutchinson, an old childhood friend. Mary, William, and his sister Dorothy lived together in the Lake District village of Grasmere .

William published a two-volume set of his poetry in 1807, and once more it was met by public indifference and scathing reviews (by Lord Byron among others).

Wordsworth's happy home life turned to tragedy when two of his four children died within a year. Shortly thereafter Wordsworth got himself appointed Distributor of Stamps for Westmorland, which brought him enough money to continue writing. Although his poems were critically panned, they were gaining a wide popular readership.

In the absence of success for his poems, Wordsworth turned to travel writing. He published a travel guide to the Lake District which proved very popular.

When Robert Southey, the Poet Laureate, died in 1843, Wordsworth was asked to take his place. He initially refused, pleading his advancing age, but was induced by Sir Robert Peel to take the post. He was still Poet Laureate when he died of pleurisy in 1850.

Places to see associated with William Wordsworth: Dove Cottage/Wordsworth Museum - Wordsworth's home from 1799-1808. It was here that he wrote his best poetry. Grasmere, Cumbria. Rydal Mount - Wordsworth's home from 1813-1850. Rydal, Ambleside, Cumbria. LA22 9LU. Wordsworth House , Main St, Cockermouth, CA13 9RX. In this fine georgian house Wordsworth was born in 1770.

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William Wordsworth

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Introduction

(1770–1850). The poet of nature, as William Wordsworth is best known, served as Great Britain’s poet laureate from 1843 until his death. His Lyrical Ballads (published in 1798), written with Samuel Taylor Coleridge , helped launch the Romantic movement in English literature .

Wordsworth was born on April 7, 1770, in Cockermouth, England. He came from a family of landowners, and from his earliest days he loved the simple country life and beauty of the region in which he lived. He attended Cambridge University, where he was an average student, and graduated in 1791.

Wordsworth’s life was peaceful and uneventful. He traveled to the Continent, however, and on his second visit became interested in the French Revolution. He decided to join the fighters for freedom. His family disapproved and stopped sending him money. The lack of funds brought him back to England late in 1792. For three years he lived aimlessly, without any plans for a profession. When he received a legacy from a friend, he took a cottage in Dorset with his sister Dorothy and decided to devote his life to poetry . There he met Coleridge.

In 1797 Wordsworth moved to Alfoxden in Somerset. There he and Coleridge continued a friendship that was to influence English poetry for generations. The two poets talked, walked, and worked together. In 1798 they published their famous collection of Lyrical Ballads . All but four of the poems were written by Wordsworth. Included were Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey…,” “Michael,” and “The Revery of Poor Susan.”

Wordsworth wrote a preface to the second edition of this book, which stated the two writers’ philosophy of poetry. It startled the literary world. Wordsworth said that poetry was the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” He also said that poets should describe simple scenes in everyday words, that they should be true to nature, and that they should use imagination to create an atmosphere.

Many people laughed at Wordsworth’s ideas and at his poems, but he kept writing for the rest of his long life. He had done most of his finest work by 1807.

For about the last 50 years of his life Wordsworth lived in the Lake District in the north of England, first in Grasmere. There in 1802 he married his cousin Mary Hutchinson. The family moved to Rydal Mount, near Ambleside, in 1813. Gradually the poet won public favor, and critics finally agreed with his ideas. He was made poet laureate in 1843. He died at Rydal Mount on April 23, 1850.

In his long poem The Prelude Wordsworth relates the story of his mental growth. He tells how his boyish love of nature’s beauty grew into a recognition of the kinship between nature and humankind. He expressed his love of nature in his “Ode: Intimations of Immortality” when he wrote, “To me the meanest flower that blows can give thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”

Wordsworth is not a dramatic poet, but in his best nature poems, some of his sonnets, and several of his peasant poems he changes the commonplace into stirring poetry. Matthew Arnold wrote, “Wordsworth’s poetry is great because of the extraordinary power with which Wordsworth feels the joy offered us in Nature, the joy offered us in the simple affections and duties; and because of the extraordinary power with which he shows us this joy, and renders it so as to make us share it.”

Wordsworth’s published works include An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches (1793), Lyrical Ballads (1798), Poems, in Two Volumes (1807), The Excursion (1814), The White Doe of Rylstone (1815), and The Prelude (1850). Some of his best poems are “The Solitary Reaper,” “Michael,” “Tintern Abbey,” “Daffodils,” “Ode: Intimations of Immortality,” some of the “Lucy” poems, “Westminster Bridge,” “The World Is Too Much with Us,” and “To Milton.”

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William Wordsworth Biography

Born: April 7, 1770 Cookermouth, Cumberland, England Died: April 23, 1850 Rydal Mount, Westmorland, England English poet

William Wordsworth was an early leader of romanticism (a literary movement that celebrated nature and concentrated on human emotions) in English poetry and ranks as one of the greatest lyric poets in the history of English literature.

His early years

William Wordsworth was born on April 7, 1770, in Cookermouth, Cumberland, England, the second child of an attorney. Unlike the other major English romantic poets, he enjoyed a happy childhood under the loving care of his mother and was very close to his sister Dorothy. As a child he wandered happily through the lovely natural scenery of Cumberland. In grammar school, Wordsworth showed a keen interest in poetry. He was fascinated by the epic poet John Milton (1608–1674).

From 1787 to 1790 Wordsworth attended St. John's College at Cambridge University. He always returned to his home and to nature during his summer vacations. Before graduating from Cambridge, he took a walking tour through France, Switzerland, and Italy in 1790. The Alps made an impression on him that he did not recognize until fourteen years later.

Stay in France

Wordsworth fell passionately in love with a French girl, Annette Vallon. She gave birth to their daughter in December 1792. However, Wordsworth had spent his limited funds and was forced to return home. The separation left him with a sense of guilt that deepened his poetic inspiration and resulted in an important theme in his work of abandoned women.

Publication of first poems

Wordsworth's first poems, Descriptive Sketches and An Evening Walk, were printed in 1793. He wrote several pieces over the next several years. The year 1797 marked the beginning of Wordsworth's long friendship with Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834). Together they published Lyrical Ballads in 1798. Wordsworth wanted to challenge "the gaudiness [unnecessarily flashy] and inane [foolish] phraseology [wording] of many modern writers." Most of his poems in this collection centered on the simple yet deeply human feelings of ordinary people, phrased in their own language. His views on this new kind of poetry were more fully described in the important "Preface" that he wrote for the second edition (1800).

"Tintern Abbey"

Wordsworth's most memorable contribution to this volume was "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey," which he wrote just in time to include it. This poem is the first major piece to illustrate his original talent at its best. It skillfully combines matter-of-factness in natural description with a genuinely mystical (magical) sense of infinity, joining self-exploration to philosophical speculation (questioning). The poem closes on a subdued but confident reassertion of nature's healing power, even though mystical insight may be obtained from the poet.

In its successful blending of inner and outer experience, of sense perception, feeling, and thought, "Tintern Abbey" is a poem in which the writer becomes a symbol of mankind. The poem leads to imaginative thoughts about man and the universe. This cosmic outlook rooted in the self is a central feature of romanticism. Wordsworth's poetry is undoubtedly the most impressive example of this view in English literature.

Poems of the middle period

Wordsworth, even while writing his contributions to the Lyrical Ballads, had been feeling his way toward more ambitious schemes. He had embarked on a long poem in unrhymed verse, "The Ruined Cottage," later referred to as "The Peddlar." It was intended to form part of a vast philosophical poem with the title "The Recluse, or Views of Man, Nature and Society." This grand project never materialized as originally planned.

Abstract, impersonal speculation was not comfortable for Wordsworth. He could handle experiences in the philosophical-lyrical manner only if they were closely related to himself and could arouse his creative feelings and imagination. During the winter months he spent in Germany, he started work on his magnum opus (greatest work), The Prelude, or Growth of a Poet's Mind. It was published after his death.

However, such a large achievement was still beyond Wordsworth's scope (area of capabilities) at this time. It was back to the shorter poetic forms that he turned during the most productive season of his long literary life, the spring of 1802. The output of these fertile (creative) months mostly came from his earlier inspirations: nature and the common people. During this time he wrote "To a Butterfly," "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," "To the Cuckoo," "The Rainbow," and other poems.

Changes in philosophy

The crucial event of this period was Wordsworth's loss of the sense of mystical oneness, which had sustained (lasted throughout) his highest imaginative flights. Indeed, a mood of despondency (depression) descended over Wordsworth, who was then thirty-two years old.

In the summer of 1802 Wordsworth spent a few weeks in Calais, France, with his sister Dorothy. Wordsworth's renewed contact with France only confirmed his disillusionment (disappointment) with the French Revolution and its aftermath.

During this period Wordsworth had become increasingly concerned with Coleridge, who by now was almost totally dependent upon opium (a highly addictive drug) for relief from his physical sufferings. Both friends came to believe that the realities of life were in stark contradiction (disagreement) to the visionary expectations of their youth. Wordsworth characteristically sought to redefine his own identity in ways that would allow him a measure of meaning. The new turn his life took in 1802 resulted in an inner change that set the new course his poetry followed from then on.

Poems about England and Scotland began pouring forth from Wordsworth's pen, while France and Napoleon (1769–1821) soon became Wordsworth's favorite symbols of cruelty and oppression. His nationalistic (intense pride in one's own country) inspiration led him to produce the two "Memorials of a Tour in Scotland" (1803, 1814) and the group entitled "Poems Dedicated to National Independence and Liberty."

Poems of 1802

The best poems of 1802, however, deal with a deeper level of inner change. In Wordsworth's poem "Intimations of Immortality" (March–April), he plainly recognized that "The things which I have seen I now can see no more"; yet he emphasized that although the "visionary gleam" had fled, the memory remained, and although the "celestial light" had vanished, the "common sight" of "meadow, grove and stream" was still a potent (strong) source of delight and solace (comfort).

Thus Wordsworth shed his earlier tendency to idealize nature and turned to a more sedate (calm) doctrine (set of beliefs) of orthodox Christianity. Younger poets and critics soon blamed him for this "recantation" (renouncing), which they equated with his change of mind about the French Revolution. His Ecclesiastical Sonnets (1822) are clear evidence of the way in which love of freedom, nature, and the Church came to coincide (come together at the same time) in his mind.

The Prelude

Nevertheless, it was the direction suggested in "Intimations of Immortality" that, in the view of later criticism, enabled Wordsworth to produce perhaps the most outstanding achievement of English romanticism: The Prelude. He worked on it, on and off, for several years and completed the first version in May 1805. The Prelude can claim to be the only true romantic epic (long, often heroic work) because it deals in narrative terms with the spiritual growth of the only true romantic hero, the poet. The inward odyssey (journey) of the poet was described not for its own sake but as a sample and as an adequate image of man at his most sensitive.

Wordsworth shared the general romantic notion that personal experience is the only way to gain living knowledge. The purpose of The Prelude was to recapture and interpret, with detailed thoroughness, the whole range of experiences that had contributed to the shaping of his own mind. Wordsworth refrained from publishing the poem in his lifetime, revising it continuously. Most important and, perhaps, most to be regretted, the poet also tried to give a more orthodox tinge to his early mystical faith in nature.

Later years

Wordsworth's estrangement (growing apart) from Coleridge in 1810 deprived him of a powerful incentive to imaginative and intellectual alertness. Wordsworth's appointment to a government position in 1813 relieved him of financial care.

Wordsworth's undiminished love for nature made him view the emergent (just appearing) industrial society with undisguised reserve. He opposed the Reform Bill of 1832, which, in his view, merely transferred political power from the land owners to the manufacturing class, but he never stopped pleading in favor of the victims of the factory system.

In 1843 Wordsworth was appointed poet laureate (official poet of a country). He died on April 23, 1850.

For More Information

Davies, Hunter. William Wordsworth: A Biography. New York: Atheneum, 1980.

Gill, Stephen. William Wordsworth: A Life. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.

Johnston, Kenneth R. The Hidden Wordsworth: Poet, Lover, Rebel, Spy. New York: W. W. Norton, 1998.

Negrotta, Rosanna. William Wordsworth: A Biography with Selected Poems. London: Brockhampton, 1999.

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William Wordsworth

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William Wordsworth Biography and Works | Themes and Literary Awards

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William Wordsworth Biography and Works

William Wordsworth Biography and Works , William Wordsworth Biography and Works | Themes and Literary Awards William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was an English Romantic poet who helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the publication of Lyrical Ballads in 1798, a collection of poems he co-authored with Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

He is considered one of the most influential and celebrated poets in the English language, with a body of work that spans over five decades and includes some of the most beloved and widely anthologized poems in the English canon.

Early Life and Education

William Wordsworth was born on April 7, 1770, in Cockermouth, a small town in the Lake District region of northwestern England. He was the second of five children born to John Wordsworth, an attorney, and his wife, Ann Cookson. Wordsworth’s mother died when he was only eight years old, and he was sent to live with his mother’s family in Penrith, a town about twenty miles from Cockermouth. Wordsworth’s father died when he was thirteen, and he was then sent to live with an uncle in Hawkshead, a small village in the Lake District. William Wordsworth Biography and Works

William Wordsworth Biography and Works:- Wordsworth attended Cambridge University, where he studied classics and wrote poetry. He also traveled to France, where he became fluent in French and was exposed to the revolutionary ideas of the French Revolution. Wordsworth’s experiences in France would have a profound impact on his political and philosophical beliefs and on his poetry. 

Poetic Career

Wordsworth’s early poetry was heavily influenced by the neoclassical style of the eighteenth century, but he gradually began to develop a more personal and expressive style that would become the hallmark of Romantic poetry. William Wordsworth Biography and Works, In 1793, Wordsworth published his first collection of poems, An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches, which were well-received by critics but did not receive much attention from the public.

Also Read:- William Shakespeare Biography and Works

William Wordsworth Biography and Works:- In 1795, Wordsworth met Samuel Taylor Coleridge, with whom he would form a close friendship and a productive literary partnership. The two poets collaborated on Lyrical Ballads, which was published in 1798 and is now considered a seminal work of English Romanticism. The collection included some of Wordsworth’s most famous poems, including “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,” “We Are Seven,” and “The Tables Turned.” The poems in Lyrical Ballads broke with the conventions of eighteenth-century poetry by using ordinary language, focusing on ordinary people and everyday experiences, and exploring the emotions and inner lives of the speakers.

Mature Career

Wordsworth continued to write poetry throughout his life, and his later work is often characterized by a more reflective and philosophical tone. In 1807, he published his most ambitious work, The Prelude, an autobiographical poem that he continued to revise and expand throughout his life. The poem explores the development of Wordsworth’s consciousness and his poetic sensibility, from his childhood experiences in the Lake District to his travels in France and his encounters with the natural world.

William Wordsworth Biography and Works:- In addition to his poetry, Wordsworth was also a prolific essayist and prose writer. He wrote about a wide range of topics, including politics, nature, education, and literary criticism. His essay “Preface to Lyrical Ballads,” which he wrote in 1800, is considered a manifesto of English Romanticism and a key text in the history of literary criticism.William Wordsworth Biography and Works

Late Life and Legacy

In his later years, Wordsworth became increasingly involved in politics and social reform. He served as a local magistrate and was active in the campaign for parliamentary reform. He also continued to write poetry, and his later work often reflected his political and social concerns. William Wordsworth Biography and Works

William Wordsworth Works

Please note that some of William Wordsworth’s works were published in various years, and their themes often overlap or encompass multiple aspects. The table provides a general overview of the major works and their respective publication years and themes. William Wordsworth Biography and Works

#1. Lyrical Ballads (1798)

“Lyrical Ballads,” co-authored with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, is a groundbreaking collection of poems that challenged the conventions of 18th-century poetry. It includes Wordsworth’s famous poems such as:

• “Tintern Abbey” – Reflects on the transformative power of nature and the lasting impact of childhood memories.
• “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (Coleridge) – A narrative poem exploring guilt, redemption, and the supernatural.

#2. “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” (1798)

This introspective poem reflects on the restorative influence of nature on the human spirit. Wordsworth contemplates his return to Tintern Abbey after a five-year absence, marveling at the memories and sensations it evokes.

#3. “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” (1807)

Also known as “Daffodils,” this poem celebrates the beauty of nature and the transformative effect it has on the poet’s mood. It describes a vivid encounter with a field of daffodils, emphasizing the lasting impact of nature’s beauty on the human imagination.

#4. “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood” (1807)

In this reflective ode, Wordsworth explores the loss of innocence and the fading connection with the divine as one grows older. He contemplates the significance of childhood memories and the glimpses of immortality they offer.

#5. “The Prelude” (1850)

“The Prelude” is an autobiographical long poem that reflects on Wordsworth’s own experiences, emotions, and philosophical beliefs. It explores themes of memory, growth, and the development of the poet’s mind, tracing his journey from childhood to adulthood.

#6. “The Excursion” (1814)

A philosophical poem in blank verse, “The Excursion” delves into themes of nature, spirituality, and the role of the imagination in shaping human existence. It follows a group of characters engaged in a poetic dialogue about life’s deeper meanings.

William Wordsworth’s works demonstrate his deep connection to nature, his belief in the power of the individual’s experiences, and his ability to evoke profound emotions through poetic language. His poetry continues to be celebrated for its timeless relevance, vivid imagery, and the enduring beauty of his words.

#7. “The Prelude” (1850)

William Wordsworth Biography and Works “The Prelude” is an autobiographical long poem that reflects on Wordsworth’s own experiences, emotions, and philosophical beliefs. It explores themes of memory, growth, and the development of the poet’s mind, tracing his journey from childhood to adulthood. The poem is divided into several books, each focusing on different stages of Wordsworth’s life and the significant events that shaped him as a poet.

#8. “Sonnet Series”

Wordsworth wrote an extensive series of sonnets that delve into various themes, including nature, love, loss, and the passage of time. Some of the notable sonnets include “Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802,” “ London, 1802 ,” and “The World is Too Much with Us.” William Wordsworth Biography and Works | Themes and Literary Awards

#9. “The Lucy Poems”

“The Lucy Poems” is a collection of five lyrical poems dedicated to an enigmatic figure named Lucy. These poems, including “Strange fits of passion have I known” and “She dwelt among the untrodden ways,” explore themes of love, beauty, mortality, and the fleeting nature of life.

#10. “The Solitary Reaper”

“The Solitary Reaper” is a poem that captures the sublime beauty of a Scottish girl singing in a field. Wordsworth immerses himself in the enchanting scene, describing the impact of her melodic voice and reflecting on the power of music to evoke deep emotions and transcend language barriers.

#11. “Elegiac Stanzas”

“Elegiac Stanzas” is a poignant elegy composed by Wordsworth in memory of his close friend, Charles Gough. The poem reflects on the nature of grief, the fleeting nature of life, and the significance of human connections in the face of mortality.

#12. “Ode to Duty”

In “Ode to Duty,” Wordsworth explores the concept of duty as a guiding force in life. He reflects on the importance of moral responsibility and the fulfillment that comes from fulfilling one’s obligations. The poem emphasizes the virtues of steadfastness, integrity, and self-discipline in navigating the complexities of existence.

#13. “The Daffodils” (1804)

“The Daffodils,” also known as “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” is one of Wordsworth’s most beloved and widely recognized poems. It vividly describes the poet’s encounter with a field of daffodils, evoking a sense of joy, wonder, and the profound impact of nature’s beauty on the human spirit.

#14. “To a Butterfly”

“To a Butterfly” is a short and lyrical poem in which Wordsworth addresses a butterfly, marveling at its ephemeral beauty and delicate existence. The poem reflects on the fleeting nature of life and the interconnectedness of all living beings.

#15. “Ode: Intimations of Immortality” (1807)

In this depth philosophical ode, Wordsworth contemplates the loss of the spiritual connection and sense of wonder experienced in childhood. He explores the transient nature of life and grapples with the idea of the soul’s pre-existence and its ultimate reunion with a divine realm. William Wordsworth Biography and Works | Themes and Literary Awards

William Wordsworth’s works encompass a wide range of themes, from the awe-inspiring beauty of nature to the complexities of human emotions and the philosophical musings on life and mortality. His poetry captures the essence of the Romantic era and continues to captivate readers with its profound insights, lyrical language, and timeless relevance.

Themes and Style

Themes: William Wordsworth’s poetry is characterized by a deep appreciation of nature, an emphasis on the beauty of the simple and ordinary, and a celebration of the power of the human imagination. His poetry often explores the relationship between the individual and nature, the connection between the past and the present, and the role of memory and imagination in shaping our experiences.

Style: Wordsworth’s poetry is characterized by a simple, direct language that is intended to evoke a sense of immediacy and authenticity. He believed that poetry should be written in the language of everyday speech, rather than in the artificial language of traditional poetry. His poetry is also characterized by a careful attention to the details of the natural world, and by an emphasis on the sensory experience of the world.

William Wordsworth Biography and Works William Wordsworth was a best figure in English Romantic poetry and one of the most influential poet in the English language. His poetry celebrated the beauty and power of nature, explored the relationship between the individual and the natural world, and celebrated the imaginative powers of the human mind.

His simple and direct style, William Wordsworth Biography and Works | Themes and Literary Awards , use of the lyric form, and emphasis on the subjective experience of the poet have influenced generations of poets who have followed in his footsteps. Wordsworth’s legacy continues to inspire readers and writers alike, and his poetry remains an enduring testament to the power of the human imagination and the beauty of the natural world.

Q: Who was William Wordsworth?

A: William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was a major English Romantic poet, known for his poems that celebrated nature, imagination, and the human spirit. He was also a key figure in the English Romantic movement, along with poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, and Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Q: What are some of William Wordsworth’s most famous poems?

A: Some of Wordsworth’s most famous poems include “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” (also known as “Daffodils”), “Tintern Abbey,” “The Prelude,” “Ode: Intimations of Immortality,” and “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey.”

Q: What was William Wordsworth’s writing style?

A: Wordsworth’s writing style was characterized by simple, direct language that emphasized the power of nature, the imagination, and the subjective experience of the poet. He believed that poetry should be written in the language of everyday speech, rather than in the artificial language of traditionl poetry. William Wordsworth Biography and Works | Themes and Literary Awards He also used the lyric form, which is a short, musical poem that expresses the poet’s personal feelings and emotions.

Q: What is the significance of nature in William Wordsworth’s poetry?

A: Nature was a central theme in Wordsworth’s poetry, and he believed that it had the power to heal, inspire, and reveal the divine. He often used nature as a metaphor for human emotions and experiences, and celebrated the beauty and power of the natural world in his poetry.

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English Compositions

Short Essay on William Wordsworth [100, 200, 400 Words] With PDF

William Wordsworth was a great English poet of the 18-19th century. Sometimes in our lives, we all have read some poetry of Wordsworth. He was such a poet who always stayed connected with nature. In this lesson, you will learn how to write an essay on the life of this great nature poet. So, without further delay, let’s get started.

Short Essay on William Wordsworth in 100 Words

William Wordsworth was one of the significant Romantic poets of nineteenth-century England. He was born in 1770, and died in 1850, at the age of 80. Wordsworth is principally known for his several poems and criticisms. His major work, the Lyrical Ballads ( 1798), is a great composition.

He created this composition through a collaboration with his friend and companion Coleridge. Wordsworth is ethically a guardian to all other Romantic literature since he started the Romantic movement in England. The primary topic for poetry is love for nature as the only repose to human suffering. The language of Wordsworth’s poem is prosaic, yet profound.

Short Essay on William Wordsworth in 200 Words

 William Wordsworth is by far the best-known Romantics among all his contemporaries. He was born in 1770, in Cockermouth in Britain. Wordsworth created completely different rhetoric for his poetry that allowed every single layman to decipher it. For him, poetry is the democracy of the countrymen. The language of a Romantic poem is essentially characterised by lucid language.

Wordsworth is the pioneer of such poetic diction. As the master of Romantics, he along with Coleridge, composed The Lyrical Ballads which is a landmark in English literary history, since it departed from the old traditions and created a completely new pattern for the readers.

Wordsworth celebrates nature through his poems. His significant verses include The Tintern Abbey, The Daffodils, The Lucy poems, The Preludes, and The Excursion. In all these poems he places nature as the central imagery. He includes incidents of common life and relates his poetry with that. In The Daffodils, the long fields of the yellow fluttering flowers appeal to the mind of the poet.

The rustic life is chosen by Wordsworth since it captures the eternal passion of human life and true sensibilities. Wordsworth is a mystic and a thinker, who blends poetry, spirituality, and philosophy together. He demised at the age of 80, at Rydals, Britain.

Short Essay on William Wordsworth in 400 Words

William Wordsworth is a man of miracles in the canon of British literature. He was born on 7th April 1770 at Cockermouth, UK. In him, the readers can observe a thinker, poet, philosopher, mystic, and critic altogether. His spouse was Mary Hutchinson. Wordsworth’s poetry can be categorised into 3 divisions- firstly, the poetry of nature, secondly, a man in relation with nature, and thirdly, the relation of man, nature, and social living. 

Wordsworth is a poet of nature. He worships nature not because of its outer beauty, but because of the presence of a spirit in every object of nature. He finds it everywhere- in hills, valleys, springs, rivers, birds, and flowers. He calls Nature, “ the anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, the guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul of all my moral being’’. The animals also become part of his nature observation. So his important poems like White Doe, The cuckoo, The Skylark have a mystic love in his poetry. 

Not just nature he is also a poet of man. The 1801 edition of the Lyrical Ballads contains a Preface by Wordsworth that defines the idea of Romantic movement and the concept of writing poetry as the ‘’ spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions’’. For him the unsophisticated man becomes important.

The lucidity of his language is for man, where his poetry is a democratic approach to creation. It is the language of commoners, simple and rustic. The chief note in his poems is love for nature. It is a living force in his verse, and it includes humble rural folk, the shepherds, the rustic, the innocent, and the children. 

Wordsworth’s chief pastoral poems are Descriptive Sketches, The Preludes, Odeon Intimation of Immortality, The Excursion, and others. In each of these poems, nature is the teacher, that educates men of the essence of their life. In fact, nature contains God as the poet considers it.

Wordsworth views God in every aspect of Nature. In his view, nature and man are one and together. So he considers the simple village life. His poetic vision is that of harmony and peace. Nature is ideal for humans to remain divine and secluded. The poet sees these as inseparable parts of the spiritual operation. 

This great poet died in the year 1850, at the age of 80. Wordsworth is a master of poetry placed after Shakespeare and Milton. He is an inspired poet and his poems heal men from their anxieties and distractions.

So, that’s all about writing essays on the life of William Wordsworth. In this session, I have tried to concise the life of the great poet within very limited words. Moreover, I tried to present the entire session in simple language for all kinds of students. Hopefully, now you will be able to write such an essay yourself. If you still have any doubts regarding this session, let me know through the comment section below. To read more such essays, keep browsing our website. 

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