William Wordsworth (1973 – 1850)

 Born on April 7, 1770

At Cockermouth, Cumbria, England
 Died on April 23, 1850 (age 80)
At Rydal Mount, England
Buried at St. Oswald’s Church, Grasmere
Cause of death: An aggravated case of pleurisy
 Wordsworth married his childhood friend Mary Hutchinson on 4th October
1802.
 Mary and Wordsworth had five children, two of which died at a young age
– Thomas and Catherine.
 He married four times and had seven children with two of his wives.
 One of the founders of English Romanticism and one its most central
figures and important intellects

Early Life
 Father: John Wordsworth – A legal agent for James Lowther, 1st Earl of
Lonsdale and Collector of Customs at Whitehaven
 Mother: Ann Cookson
 In 1766, John and Ann married when they were 26 and 18, respectively.
 William Wordsworth was the second of five children that John and Ann
had.
 Siblings:
1. Robert - lawyer
2. Dorothy – poet and diarist
3. John – poet (died in a shipwreck in 1805)
4. Christopher – scholar and 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 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.

Education
 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. At this school, Wordsworth was taught both 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 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.
 Wordsworth made his debut as a writer in 1878 when he published a
sonnet in The European Magazine.
 Wordsworth received his BA degree in 1791.

France and Annette Vallon

 Following his graduation, Wordsworth travelled to Revolutionary France
and found a love for the Republican Movement.
 He fell in love with a French woman, Annette Vallon, who gave birth to his
daughter, Caroline, in 1972. 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.
 The French Revolution and difficult relationship between England and
France prevented Wordsworth from returning to France for several years,
which he finally did in 1802.
 The reason for Wordsworth’s visit was to tell Annette about his upcoming
marriage to Mary Hutchinson.
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.
 In 1795, Wordsworth met Samuel Taylor Coleridge in Somerset and the
two poets quickly developed a close friendship. Together, Wordsworth and
Coleridge, with insights from Dorothy, produced Lyrical Ballads (1798), an
important work in the English Romantic movement.
 Two of their most famous poems were published
a. Wordsworth’s poem “Tintern Abbey”
b. 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.
 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.
 From 1795 – 1797, Wordsworth wrote his only play, The Borderers. This is
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.
 Wordsworth began working on his autobiographical piece, which would
later be titled The Prelude.
 He wrote a few 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 1799, 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.

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
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.

Poems, in Two Volumes

 In 1807, Wordsworth published Poems, in Two Volumes, including “Ode:
Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood”.

The Prospectus
 In 1814, Wordsworth published The Excursion, which was the second part
of the three-part work The Recluse.
 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.

Historical Significance
 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
 Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems (1798)
 “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”
 Lyrical Ballads, with Other Poems (1800)
 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”
 Poems, in Two Volumes (1807)
 “Resolution and Independence”
 “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” also known as “Daffodils”
 “My Heart Leaps Up”
 “Ode: Intimations of Immortality”
 “Ode to Duty”
 “The Solitary Reaper”
 “Elegiac Stanzas”
 “Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802”
 “London, 1802”
 “The World is Too Much with US”