William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

British poet, who spent his life in the Lake District of

Northern England. William Wordsworth started with Samuel
Taylor Coleridge the English Romantic movement with their
collection LYRICAL BALLADS in 1798. When many poets
still wrote about ancient heroes in grandiloquent style,
Wordsworth focused on the nature, children, the poor,
common people, and used ordinary words to express his
personal feelings. His definition of poetry as "the
spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings arising from
"emotion recollected in tranquillity" was shared by a number
of his followers.
"Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the
impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all Science."
(from Lyrical Ballads, 2nd ed., 1800)

William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth,

Cumberland, in the Lake District. His father was John
Wordsworth, Sir James Lowther's attorney - the fifth
Baronet Lowther was the most feared and hated aristocrat in
all of Cumberland and Westmoreland, "an Intolerable Tyrant
over his Tenants and Dependents". However, the
magnificent landscape deeply affected Wordsworth's
imagination and gave him a love of nature. He lost his
mother when he was eight and five years later his father. The
domestic problems separated Wordsworth from h
is beloved and neurotic sister
Need For Extreme 3D (2).lnk

Dorothy, who was a very important person in his life.

Dorothy had especially fresh contact to nature from a very
early age. Her thoughts and impression were a valuable
source of inspiration for her brother, who also introduced
himself as Nature's child. The first time she saw the sea, she
burst into tears, "indicating the sensibility for which she was
so remarkable," Wordsworth remembered.
With the help of his two uncles, Wordsworth entered a local
school and continued his studies at Cambridge University.
As a writer Wordsworth made his debut in 1787, when he
published a sonnet in The European Magazine. In that same
year he entered St. John's College, Cambridge, from where
he took his B.A. in 1791. During a summer vacation in
1790, Wordsworth went on a walking tour through
revolutionary France. He also traveled in Switzerland.

On his second journey in France, Wordsworth had an affair

with a French girl, Annette Vallon, a daughter of a barbersurgeon, by whom he had a illegitimate daughter Anne
Caroline. The affair was basis of the poem 'Vaudracour and
Julia', but otherwise Wordsworth did his best to hide the
affair from posterity. After his journeys, Wordsworth spent
several aimless and unhappy years. In 1795 he met
Coleridge. Wordsworth's financial situation became better in
1795 when he received a legacy and was able to settle at
Racedown, Dorset, with his sister Dorothy.
Encouraged by Coleridge and stimulated by the close
contact with nature, Wordsworth composed his first
masterwork, Lyrical Ballads, which opened with Coleridge's
'Ancient Mariner.' About 1798 he started to write a large and
philosophical autobiographical poem, completed in 1805,
and published posthumously in 1850 under the title THE
PRELUDE. The long work described the poet's love of
nature and his own place in the world order.
"Dust as we are, the immortal spirit grows
Like harmony in music; there is a dark
Inscrutable workmanship that reconciles
Discordant elements, makes them cling together
In one society."

The winter 1798-99 Wordsworth spent with his sister and

Coleridge in Germany. There he wrote several works,
including the enigmatic 'Lucy' poems. After return he moved
Dove Cottage, Grasmere. In 1802 married Mary Hutchinson.
They cared for Wordsworth's sister Dorothy for the last 20
years of life she had lost her mind as a result of physical
ailments. Almost all Dorothy's memory was destroyed, she
sat by the fire, and occasionally recited her brother's verses.
Wordsworth's second collection, POEMS, IN TWO
VOLUMES, appeared in 1807. In the same year Thomas de
Quincey met first time Wordsworth and wrote about him
and other Lake Poets in several essays. He described
revealingly Wordsworth's mean appearance and Dorothy's
lack of sex appeal. The frankness of his text, although
published in the 1830s and 1840s, was considered indiscreet
by later Victorian critics. "... Wordsworth was of a good
height (five feet ten), and not a slender man; on the contrary,
by the side of Southey, his limbs looked thick, almost in a
disproportionate degree. But the total effect of Wordsworth's
person was always worst in a state of motion. Meantime, his
face that was one which would have made amends for
greater defects of figure." (from Reminiscenes of the English Lake
Poets by Thomas de Quincey, 1907)

Wordsworth's path-breaking works were produced between

1797 and 1808. In a letter to Lady Beaumont he said: "Every
great and original writer, in proportion as he is great and
original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be
relished." His poems written during middle and late years
have not gained similar critical approval. Wordsworth's
Grasmere period ended in 1813 when he moved to Rydal
Mount, Ambleside, where he spent the rest of his life. His
daughter Catherine and beloved son Thomas had died and
his friendship with Coleridge, suffering from addiction, was
breaking apart. Coleridge did not visit Grasmere, although
he had made a trip to the Lake District.
Wordsworth was appointed official distributor of stamps for
Westmoreland. From the age of 50 his creative began to
decline, but tree female assistants took care of him, and
filled his life with admiration. Wordsworth abandoned his
radical faith and became a patriotic, conservative public
man. In 1843 he succeeded Robert Southgey (1774-1843) as
England's poet laureate. Wordsworth died on April 23, 1850.
In the years of his death, his widow published THE
PRELUDE, completed already by 1805. It was a part of a
huge work, The Recluse, which Wordsworth and Coleridge
had planned together over 50 years ago. The subject was to
be life in general. Comparing his other published pieces with
The Recluse, Wordsworth paralled "little cells, oratories, and
sepulchral recesses" with the body of a Gothic church.
The second generation of Romantics, Byron and Shelley,
labelled Wordsworth as 'dull'. However, a long-lived poet,
Wordsworth did not only oulive Coleridge, but also his
younger contemporaries, Shelley, Keats and Byron. The
philosopher Bertrand Russell summed up the poet's career:
"In his youth Wordsworth sympathized with the French
Revolution, went to France, wrote good poetry, and had a
natural daughter. At this period he was called a 'bad' man.
Then he became 'good,' abandoned his daughter, adopted
correct principles, and wrote bad poetry."
Dorothy Wordsworth (1771-1855) published travel books
and journals, such as GRASMERE JOURNALS 1800-03
and THE ALFOXDEN JOURNAL 1798, in which she
described the friendship of Wordsworth and Coleridge. After
a serious illness in 1829, she was obliged to lead the life of
an invalid, which deeply affected her imaginative and
mental powers.
For further reading: The Hidden Wordsworth by Kenneth R. Johnston
(2001); 1798: The Year of the Lyrical Ballads, ed. by Richard Cronin
(1998); The Revolutionary 'I' by Ashton Nichols (1998); Disowned by

Memory by David Bromwich (1998); The Hidden Wordsworth by

Kenneth R. Johnston (1998); William Wordsworth: A Biography by
Hunter Davies (paperback in 1997); William Wordsworth by John
Williams (1996); Becoming Wordsworthian by Elisabeth A. Fray (1995);
A Literary Guide to the Lake District by G. Lindop (1993); Wordsworth
and the Beginnings of Modern Poetry by R.M. Rehder (1981);
Wordsworth's Second Nature by J.K. Chandler (1984); A Wordsworth
Companion by F.B. Pinion (1984); Life by M. Moorman (1957/1965);
Wordsworth and the Human Heart by J. Beer (1978); Reminiscences of
the English Lake Poets by Thomas de Quincey (1907) - See also:
WALTER DE LA MARE - Museums: Dove Cottage, Town End,
Grasmere - former home of William and Mary Wordsworth, closed midJanuary to mid-February; Rydal Mount, Ambleside - Wordsworth lived
there from 1813 to 1850. Still a family house of his descendants. Closed
Tuesdays 1 November to 28 February, and in January; Wordsworth
House, open April to October - Suom. Wordsworth: Runoja, 1949 suom. Aale Tynni, Yrj Jylh, Lauri Viljanen

Selected works:

AN EVENING WALK, 1793

DESCRIPTIVE SKETCHES, 1793

THE BORDERS, 1795-96

LYRICAL BALLADS, 1798 (with Coleridge)

LINES WRITTEN ABOVE TINTERN ABBEY,

1798

UPON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE, 1801

ON POETIC DICTION, 1802

INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY, 1803-06

POEMS I-II, 1807

MISCELLANEOUS SONNETS, 1807

TRACT ON THE CONVENTION OF CINTRA,

1809

ESSAY UPON EPITAPHS, 1810

THE EXCURSION, 1814

THE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE, 1815

PETER BELL, 1819

THE WAGGONER, 1819

THE RIVER DUDDON, 1820

MEMORIALS OF A TOUR ON THE

CONTINENT, 1822

ECCLESIASTICAL SKETCHES, 1822

YARROW REVISITED, 1835

THE PRELUDE, OR GROWTH OF A POET'S

MIND, 1850

THE RECLUSE, 1888

PROSE WORKS, 1896

THE POETICAL WORKS, 1940-49

SELECTED POEMS, 1959

LITERARY CRITICISM, 1966

LETTERS OF DOROTHY AND WILLIAM

WORDSWORTH, 1967

LETTERS OF THE WORDSWORTH FAMILY,

1969

COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS, 1971

PROSE WORKS, 1974

POEMS, 1977

THE LOVE LETTERS OF WILLIAM AND MARY

WORDSWORTH, 1981

THE FIVE-BOOK PRELUDE, 1997 (ed. by Duncan

Wu)

SELECTED CRITICAL ESSAYS, 1999 (ed. by

G.W. Meyer)


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