William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth was born in 1770 at Cockermouth, Cumbria, the son of an attorney. His parents died when he was still a child, and the losses are recorded in In 'The Prelude', his intense and haunting epic poem on childhood. Educated at St. John's college, Cambridge, Wordsworth was dissatisfied with the course and took greater pleasure in a walking tour in 1790 of France, the Alps and Italy.

Wordsworth returned to France for a year at the end of 1791, where he fell in love with Annette Vallon, who bore him a daughter. After returning to England, he published his first poem in 1793: An Everning Walk and Descriptive Sketches, which are conventional, picturesque descriptions of the Alps.

Wordsworth's disillusionment with the French Revolution, which he had strongly advocated, is reflected in his verse drama 'The Borderers', composed in 1796-7 and published in 1842. He worked closely with his friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge and together they produced Lyrical Ballads (1798), which contains much of Wordsworth's best-known poetry. In 1799 he and his sister Dorothy settled in Dove Cottage, Grasmere, and in 1802 he married Mary Hutchinson, whom he had known since childhood. In the same year, he composed 'Revolution and Independence' and began his ode 'Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood', which both appeared in Poems in Two Volumes (1807).

Wordsworth moved to Ambleside in 1813, where he stayed for the rest of his life. At this time his output was prolific, including The Excursion (1814), The white Doe of Rylstone (1814), Peter Bell and The Waggoner, both published in 1819, and many prose works. Wordsworth's popularity gradually increased and in 1843 he succeeded Robert Southey as Poet Laureate. He was deeply venerated by writers such as Matthew Arnold and John Stuart Mill.

Wordsworth spent the majority of his life in the Lake District with his sister Dorothy, who shared his joy in the pastoral world.

Wordsworth's innate grasp of the power of nature is closely linked with a deeper understanding of the feelings and emotions of the common people. Worsworth's concern with the plight of mankind is reflected in his poetry, which reveals a dread of the "Industrial Age" and a presentiment that it will destroy both man's innocence and the individuality of the human spirit.

A great innovator in English Poetry, William Wordsworth died in 1850.