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William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth (7 April 1770 – 23 April 1850)

was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor William Wordsworth
Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English
literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads
(1798).

Wordsworth's magnum opus is generally considered to

be The Prelude, a semi-autobiographical poem of his
early years that he revised and expanded a number of
times. It was posthumously titled and published by his
wife in the year of his death, before which it was
generally known as "the poem to Coleridge".

Wordsworth was Poet Laureate from 1843 until his

death from pleurisy on 23 April 1850.

Early life
Anonymous portrait of Wordsworth,
c. 1840-50
Family and education Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom
In office
The second of five children born to John Wordsworth
6 April 1843 – 23 April 1850
and Ann Cookson, William Wordsworth was born on 7
April 1770 in what is now named Wordsworth House in Monarch Victoria
Cockermouth, Cumberland, (now in Cumbria),[1] part of Preceded by Robert Southey
the scenic region in northwestern England known as the Succeeded by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Lake District. William's sister, the poet and diarist
Dorothy Wordsworth, to whom he was close all his life, Personal details
was born the following year, and the two were baptised Born 7 April 1770
together. They had three other siblings: Richard, the Cockermouth,
eldest, who became a lawyer; John, born after Dorothy, Cumberland, England
who went to sea and died in 1805 when the ship of
which he was captain, the Earl of Abergavenny, was Died 23 April 1850 (aged 80)
wrecked off the south coast of England; and Rydal, Westmorland,
Christopher, the youngest, who entered the Church and England
rose to be Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.[2] Spouse Mary Hutchinson ​(m. 1802)

Wordsworth's father was a legal representative of James Children 5, including Dora

Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale, and, through his Relatives Dorothy Wordsworth
connections, lived in a large mansion in the small town. (sister)
He was frequently away from home on business, so the
Christopher Wordsworth
young William and his siblings had little involvement
with him and remained distant from him until his death (brother)
in 1783.[3] However, he did encourage William in his

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reading, and in particular set him to commit large Richard Wordsworth

portions of verse to memory, including works by Milton, (great-great-grandson)
Shakespeare and Spenser which William would pore
John Wordsworth
over in his father's library. William also spent time at
(nephew)
his mother's parents' house in Penrith, Cumberland,
where he was exposed to the moors, but did not get Alma mater St John's College,
along with his grandparents or his uncle, who also lived Cambridge
there. His hostile interactions with them distressed him
Occupation Poet
to the point of contemplating suicide.[4]
Signature
Wordsworth was taught to read by his mother and
attended, first, a tiny school of low quality in
Cockermouth, then a school in Penrith for the children of upper-class families, where 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. Wordsworth was taught both the Bible and the Spectator, but little else. It was at the
school in Penrith that he met the Hutchinsons, including Mary, who later became his wife.[5]

After the death of Wordsworth's mother, in 1778, his father sent him to Hawkshead Grammar
School in Lancashire (now in Cumbria) and sent Dorothy to live with relatives in Yorkshire. She
and William did not meet again for nine years.

Wordsworth made his debut as a writer in 1787 when he published a sonnet in The European
Magazine. That same year he began attending St John's College, Cambridge. He received his BA
degree in 1791.[6] He returned to Hawkshead for the first two summers of his time at Cambridge,
and often spent later holidays on walking tours, visiting places famous for the beauty of their
landscape. 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.[7]

Relationship with Annette Vallon

In November 1791, Wordsworth visited Revolutionary France and became enchanted with the
Republican movement. He fell in love with a French woman, Annette Vallon, who, in 1792, gave
birth to their daughter Caroline. Financial problems and Britain's tense relations with France
forced him to return to England alone the following year.[8] The circumstances of his return and
his subsequent behaviour raised doubts as to his declared wish to marry Annette. However, he
supported her and his daughter as best he could in later life. The Reign of Terror left Wordsworth
thoroughly disillusioned with the French Revolution and the outbreak of armed hostilities between
Britain and France prevented him from seeing Annette and his daughter for some years.

With the Peace of Amiens again allowing travel to France, in 1802 Wordsworth and his sister
Dorothy visited Annette and Caroline in Calais. The purpose of the visit was to prepare Annette for
the fact of his forthcoming marriage to Mary Hutchinson.[8] Afterwards he wrote the sonnet "It is a
beauteous evening, calm and free", recalling a seaside walk with the 9-year-old Caroline, whom he
had never seen before that visit. Mary was anxious that Wordsworth should do more for Caroline.

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Upon Caroline's marriage, in 1816, Wordsworth settled £30 a year on her (equivalent to £2,400 in
2021), payments which continued until 1835, when they were replaced by a capital
settlement.[9][10]

Early career

First publication and Lyrical Ballads

The year 1793 saw the first publication of poems by

Wordsworth, in the collections An Evening Walk and
Descriptive Sketches. In 1795 he received a legacy of £900 from
Raisley Calvert and became able to pursue a career as a poet.

It was also in 1795 that he met Samuel Taylor Coleridge in

Somerset. The two poets quickly developed a close friendship.
For two years from 1795, William and his sister Dorothy lived
at Racedown House in Dorset—a property of the Pinney family
—to the west of Pilsdon Pen. They walked in the area for about
two hours every day, and the nearby hills consoled Dorothy as
she pined for the fells of her native Lakeland. She wrote,

"We have hills which, seen from a distance almost Wordsworth in 1798, about the time
take the character of mountains, some cultivated he began The Prelude.[11]
nearly to their summits, others in their wild state
covered with furze and broom. These delight me the
most as they remind me of our native wilds."[12]

In 1797, the pair 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.[13] The volume
gave neither Wordsworth's nor Coleridge's name as author. One of Wordsworth's most famous
poems, "Tintern Abbey", was published in this collection, along with Coleridge's "The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner". The second edition, published in 1800, had only Wordsworth listed as the
author, and included a preface to the poems.[14] It was augmented significantly in the next edition,
published in 1802.[15] In this preface, which some scholars consider a central work of Romantic
literary theory, Wordsworth discusses what he sees as the elements of a new type of verse, one that
is based on the ordinary language "really used by men" while avoiding the poetic diction of much
18th-century verse. Wordsworth also gives his famous definition of poetry as "the spontaneous
overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility", and calls
his own poems in the book "experimental". A fourth and final edition of Lyrical Ballads was
published in 1805.[16]

The Borderers

Between 1795 and 1797, Wordsworth wrote his only play, The Borderers, 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, but it was

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rejected by Thomas Harris, the manager of the Covent Garden Theatre, who proclaimed it
"impossible that the play should succeed in the representation". The rebuff was not received lightly
by Wordsworth and the play was not published until 1842, after substantial revision.[17]

Germany and move to the Lake District

Wordsworth, Dorothy, and Coleridge travelled to
Germany in the autumn of 1798. While Coleridge was I travelled among unknown
intellectually stimulated by the journey, its main effect men
on Wordsworth was to produce homesickness.[8] During
the harsh winter of 1798–99 Wordsworth lived with I travelled among unknown men,
Dorothy in Goslar, and, despite extreme stress and In lands beyond the sea;
loneliness, began work on the autobiographical piece Nor, England! did I know till then
that was later titled The Prelude. He wrote a number of What love I bore to thee.
other famous poems in Goslar, including "The Lucy
poems". In the Autumn of 1799, Wordsworth and his 'T is past, that melancholy dream!
sister returned to England and visited the Hutchinson Nor will I quit thy shore
family at Sockburn. When Coleridge arrived back in A second time, for still I seem
England he travelled to the North with their publisher To love thee more and more.
Joseph Cottle to meet Wordsworth and undertake a
proposed tour of the Lake District. This was the Among thy mountains did I feel
immediate cause of the brother and sister's settling at The joy of my desire;
Dove Cottage in Grasmere in the Lake District, this time And she I cherished turned her
with another poet, Robert Southey, nearby. wheel
Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey came to be known Beside an English fire.
as the "Lake Poets".[19] Throughout this period many of
Wordsworth's poems revolved around themes of death, Thy mornings showed, thy nights
endurance, separation and grief. concealed,
The bowers where Lucy played;
Married life And thine too is the last green field
That Lucy's eyes surveyed.
In 1802, Lowther's heir, William Lowther, 1st Earl of
Lonsdale, paid the £4,000 owed to Wordsworth's father [18]
through Lowther's failure to pay his aide.[20] It was this
repayment that afforded Wordsworth the financial
means to marry. On 4 October, following his visit with
Dorothy to France to arrange matters with Annette,
Wordsworth married his childhood friend Mary Hutchinson.[8]
Dorothy continued to live with the couple and grew close to
Mary. The following year Mary gave birth to the first of five
children, three of whom predeceased her and William:

Rev. John Wordsworth MA (18 June 1803 – 25 July 1875).

Vicar of Brigham, Cumberland and Rector of Plumbland,
Cumberland. Buried at Highgate Cemetery (west side). Dove Cottage (Town End,
Married four times:[21] Grasmere) – home of William and
Dorothy Wordsworth, 1799–1808;
1. Isabella Curwen (died 1848) had six children: Jane home of Thomas De Quincey,
Stanley, Henry, William, John, Charles and Edward. 1809–1820
1. Jane Stanley (1833–1912), who married the Rev.
Bennet Sherard Kennedy (an illegitimate son of

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Robert Sherard, 6th Earl of Harborough) and their son Robert Harborough Sherard
became first biographer to his friend, Oscar Wilde.[22]
2. Helen Ross (died 1854). No children.
3. Mary Ann Dolan (died after 1858) had one daughter Dora.

1. Dora Wordsworth (1858–1934)[23]

4. Mary Gamble. No children.
Dora Wordsworth (16 August 1804 – 9 July 1847). Married Edward Quillinan in 1841.
Thomas Wordsworth (15 June 1806 – 1 December 1812).
Catherine Wordsworth (6 September 1808 – 4 June 1812).
William "Willy" Wordsworth (12 May 1810 – 1883). Married Fanny Graham and had four
children: Mary Louisa, William, Reginald, Gordon

Later career

Autobiographical work and Poems, in Two Volumes

Wordsworth had for years been making plans to write a long philosophical poem in three parts,
which he intended to call The Recluse.[24] In 1798–99 he started an autobiographical poem, which
he referred to 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.[25] 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. The death of his brother John, also in 1805,
affected him strongly and may have influenced his decisions about these works.[26]

Wordsworth's philosophical allegiances as articulated in The

Prelude and in such shorter works as "Lines written a few miles
above Tintern Abbey" have been a source of critical debate. It
was long supposed that Wordsworth relied chiefly on Coleridge
for philosophical guidance, but more recently scholars have
suggested that Wordsworth's ideas may have been formed
years before he and Coleridge became friends in the mid-1790s.
In particular, while he was in revolutionary Paris in 1792, the
22-year-old Wordsworth made the acquaintance of the
mysterious traveller John "Walking" Stewart (1747–1822),[27] Rydal Mount – home to Wordsworth
who was nearing the end of his thirty years of wandering, on 1813–1850. Hundreds of visitors
foot, from Madras, India, through Persia and Arabia, across came here to see him over the
Africa and Europe, and up through the fledgling United States. years
By the time of their association, Stewart had published an
ambitious work of original materialist philosophy entitled The
Apocalypse of Nature (London, 1791), to which many of Wordsworth's philosophical sentiments
may well be indebted.

In 1807 Wordsworth published Poems, in Two Volumes, including "Ode: Intimations of

Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood". Up to this point, Wordsworth was known only
for Lyrical Ballads, and he hoped that this new collection would cement his reputation. Its
reception was lukewarm, however.

In 1810, Wordsworth and Coleridge were estranged over the latter's opium addiction,[8] and in
1812, his son Thomas died at the age of 6, six months after the death of 3-year-old Catherine. The
following year he received an appointment as Distributor of Stamps for Westmorland, and the
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stipend of £400 a year made him financially secure, albeit at the cost of political independence. In
1813, he and his family, including Dorothy, moved to Rydal Mount, Ambleside (between Grasmere
and Rydal Water), where he spent the rest of his life.[8]

The Prospectus

In 1814 Wordsworth published The Excursion as the second part of the three-part work The
Recluse, even though he never completed the first part or the third part. He did, however, write a
poetic Prospectus to The Recluse in which he laid out the structure and intention of the whole
work. The Prospectus contains some of Wordsworth's most famous lines on the relation between
the human mind and nature:

... my voice proclaims

How exquisitely the individual Mind
(And the progressive powers perhaps no less
Of the whole species) to the external World
Is fitted:—and how exquisitely, too—
Theme this but little heard of among Men,
The external World is fitted to the Mind;
And the creation (by no lower name
Can it be called) which they with blended might
Accomplish ...[28]

Some modern critics[29] suggest that there was a decline in his work beginning around the mid-
1810s, perhaps 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.[30] By
1820, he was enjoying considerable success accompanying a reversal in the contemporary critical
opinion of his earlier works.

The poet William Blake, who knew of Wordsworth's work, was struck by Wordsworth's boldness in
centering his poetry on the human mind. In response to Wordsworth's poetic program that, “when
we look / Into our Minds, into the Mind of Man- / My haunt, and the main region of my song” (The
Excursion), William Blake wrote to his friend Henry Crabb Robinson that the passage "“caused
him a bowel complaint which nearly killed him”.[31]

Following the death of his friend the painter William Green in 1823, Wordsworth also mended his
relations with Coleridge.[32] The two were fully reconciled by 1828, when they toured the
Rhineland together.[8] Dorothy suffered from a severe illness in 1829 that rendered her an invalid
for the remainder of her life. Coleridge and Charles Lamb both died in 1834, their loss being a
difficult blow to Wordsworth. The following year saw the passing of James Hogg. Despite the death
of many contemporaries, the popularity of his poetry ensured a steady stream of young friends and
admirers to replace those he lost.

Religious and philosophical beliefs

Wordsworth's youthful political radicalism, unlike Coleridge's, never led him to rebel against his
religious upbringing. He remarked in 1812 that he was willing to shed his blood for the established
Church of England, reflected in his Ecclesiastical Sketches of 1822. This religious conservatism
also colours The Excursion (1814), a long poem that became extremely popular during the

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nineteenth century. It features three central characters: the Wanderer, the Solitary, who has
experienced the hopes and miseries of the French Revolution, and the Pastor, who dominates the
last third of the poem.[33]

Wordsworth's poetic philosophy

Behler[34] has pointed out the fact that Wordsworth wanted to invoke the basic feeling that a
human heart possesses and expresses. He had reversed the philosophical standpoint expressed by
his friend S. T. Coleridge, of 'creating the characters in such an environment so that the public feels
them belonging to the distant place and time'. And it is true that this philosophical realization by
Wordsworth allowed him to choose the language and structural patterning of the poetry that a
common man used every day.[35] Kurland wrote that the conversational aspect of a language
emerges through social necessity.[36] Social necessity posits the theme of possessing the proper
knowledge, interest and biases also among the speakers. William Wordsworth has used
conversation in his poetry to let the poet 'I' merge into 'We'. The poem "Farewell" (https://allpoetr
y.com/A-Farewell) exposes the identical emotion that the poet and his sister nourish:

"We leave you here in solitude to dwell/ With these our latest gifts of tender thought;

Thou, like the morning, in thy saffron coat,/ Bright gowan, and marsh-marigold, farewell!" (L.19–
22).

This kind of conversational tone persists all through the poetic journey of the poet, that positions
him as a man in society who speaks to the purpose of communion with the very common mass of
that society.[37] Again; "Preface to Lyrical Ballads" [1] (https://web.english.upenn.edu/~jenglish/
Courses/Spring2001/040/preface1802.html) is the evidence where the poet expresses why he is
writing and what he is writing and what purpose it will serve humanity.

Laureateship and other honours

Wordsworth remained a formidable presence in his later years. In 1837, the Scottish poet and
playwright Joanna Baillie reflected on her long acquaintance with Wordsworth. "He looks like a
man that one must not speak to unless one has some sensible thing to say. However he does
occasionally converse cheerfully & well; and when one knows how benevolent & excellent he is, it
disposes one to be very much pleased with him."[38]

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", praise greatly appreciated by
Wordsworth.[8][39] (It has been argued that Wordsworth was a great influence on Keble's
immensely popular book of devotional poetry, The Christian Year (1827).[40]) In 1842, the
government awarded him a Civil List pension of £300 a year.

Following the death of Robert Southey in 1843 Wordsworth became Poet Laureate. He initially
refused the honour, saying that he was too old, but accepted when the Prime Minister, Robert Peel,
assured him that "you shall have nothing required of you". Wordsworth thus became the only poet
laureate to write no official verses. The sudden death of his daughter Dora in 1847 at age 42 was
difficult for the aging poet to take and in his depression, he completely gave up writing new
material.

Death

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William Wordsworth died at home at Rydal Mount from an

aggravated case of pleurisy on 23 April 1850,[41][42] and was 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.[43] Though it failed to interest people at the
time, it has since come to be widely recognised as his masterpiece.

In popular culture
Composer Alicia Van Buren (1860–1922) used text by Wordsworth for
her song "In Early Spring".[44]

Margaret Louisa Woods portrayed the young Wordsworth in her novel Gravestone of William
A Poet's Youth (1923). Wordsworth, Grasmere,
Cumbria
Ken Russell's 1978 film William and Dorothy portrays the
relationship between William and his sister Dorothy.[45]

Wordsworth and Coleridge's friendship is examined by Julien Temple in his 2000 film
Pandaemonium.[46]

Wordsworth has appeared as a character in works of fiction, including:

William Kinsolving – Mister Christian. 1996

Jasper Fforde – The Eyre Affair. 2001
Val McDermid – The Grave Tattoo. 2006
Sue Limb – The Wordsmiths at Gorsemere. 2008

Isaac Asimov's 1966 novelisation of the 1966 film Fantastic Voyage sees Dr. Peter Duval quoting
Wordsworth's The Prelude as the miniaturised submarine sails through the cerebral fluid
surrounding a human brain, comparing it to the "strange seas of thought".

Taylor Swift's 2020 album Folklore mentions Wordsworth in her bonus track "The Lakes", which
is thought to be about the Lake District.[47]

Commemoration
In April 2020, the Royal Mail issued a series of postage stamps to mark the 250th anniversary of
the birth of Wordsworth. Ten 1st class stamps were issued, featuring Wordsworth and all the major
British Romantic poets, including William Blake, John Keats, Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Walter Scott. Each stamp included an extract from one of their
most popular and enduring works, with Wordsworth's "The Rainbow" selected for the poet.[48]

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"
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"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"[49]
"She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways"[49]
"Three years she grew"[49]
"A Slumber Did my Spirit Seal"[49]
"I travelled among unknown men"[49]
"Lucy Gray"
"The Two April Mornings"
"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"
"French Revolution" (1810)[50]
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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25. "William Wordsworth – English History" (https://englishhistory.net/poets/william-wordsworth/).
18 November 2021. Retrieved 23 June 2022.
26. O&#39, John; Meara (1 January 2011). "This Life, This Death: Wordsworth's Poetic Destiny" (ht
tps://www.academia.edu/38066667). IUniverse, Bloomington IN.

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27. Kelly Grovier, "Dream Walker: A Wordsworth Mystery Solved", Times Literary Supplement, 16
February 2007
28. Poetical Works. Oxford Standard Authors. London: Oxford U.P. 1936. p. 590.
29. Hartman, Geoffrey (1987). Wordsworth's Poetry, 1787–1814. New Haven: Yale University
Press. pp. 329–331. ISBN 9780674958210.
30. Already in 1891 James Kenneth Stephen wrote satirically of Wordsworth having "two voices":
one is "of the deep", the other "of an old half-witted sheep/Which bleats articulate monotony".
31. Abrams, M.H. (1971). Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic
Literature. Norton. p. 24.
32. Sylvanus Urban, The Gentleman's Magazine, 1823
33. "Wordsworth's Religion" (http://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/ww/religion1.html).
www.victorianweb.org.
34. BEHLER, ERNST (1968). "The Origins of the Romantic Literary Theory" (https://www.jstor.org/
stable/23979800). Colloquia Germanica. 2: 109–126. ISSN 0010-1338 (https://www.worldcat.or
g/issn/0010-1338). JSTOR 23979800 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/23979800).
35. Doolittle, James (1 December 1969). "The Demonic Imagination: Style and Theme in French
Romantic Poetry" (https://dx.doi.org/10.1215/00267929-30-4-615). Modern Language
Quarterly. 30 (4): 615–617. doi:10.1215/00267929-30-4-615 (https://doi.org/10.1215%2F00267
929-30-4-615). ISSN 0026-7929 (https://www.worldcat.org/issn/0026-7929).
36. "Dan Kurland's www.criticalreading.com -- Strategies for Critical Reading and Writing" (http://w
ww.criticalreading.com/). www.criticalreading.com. Retrieved 23 June 2022.
37. Ahmed, Sheikh Saifullah (1 January 2020). "The Sociolinguistic Perspectives of the Stylistic
Liberation of Wordsworth" (https://www.academia.edu/44328447). Sparkling International
Journal of Multidisciplinary Research Studies.
38. Baillie, Joanna (2010). Thomas McLean (ed.). Further Letters of Joanna Baillie (https://books.g
oogle.com/books?id=17xLwZQppO4C&pg=PA22). Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University
Press. p. 181. ISBN 978-0-8386-4149-1.
39. Gill, pp396-7
40. "The Religious Influence of the Romantic Poets" (http://www.victorianweb.org/religion/herb4.ht
ml#ww1).
41. "Poet Laureate" (http://www.royal.gov.uk/TheRoyalHousehold/OfficialRoyalposts/PoetLaureate.
aspx), The British Monarchy official website.
42. Stephen Gill, William Wordsworth: A Life, Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 422–3.
43. e g Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal 26 December 1801
44. "Collection: Papers of Alicia Keisker Van Buren, 1889–1915 | HOLLIS for" (https://hollisarchive
s.lib.harvard.edu/repositories/8/resources/5724/collection_organization).
hollisarchives.lib.harvard.edu. Retrieved 18 April 2021.
45. "William and Dorothy (1978)" (https://web.archive.org/web/20180104152432/http://www.bfi.org.
uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b6a6847c8). BFI. Archived from the original (https://www2.bfi.org.uk/film
s-tv-people/4ce2b6a6847c8) on 4 January 2018. Retrieved 4 August 2021.
46. Van Gelder, Lawrence (13 July 2001). "FILM IN REVIEW; 'Pandaemonium' " (https://www.nytim
es.com/2001/07/13/movies/film-in-review-pandaemonium.html). The New York Times.
ISSN 0362-4331 (https://www.worldcat.org/issn/0362-4331). Retrieved 4 August 2021.
47. "Taylor Swift dedicates Folklore song to the Lake District" (https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/53
752617). BBC. 12 August 2020.
48. "New stamps issued on 250th anniversary of William Wordsworth's birth" (https://www.itv.com/n
ews/2020-04-07/new-stamps-issued-on-250th-anniversary-of-william-wordsworths-birth). ITV.
Retrieved 1 October 2022.

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49. M. H. Abrams, editor of The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic Period,
writes of these five poems: "This and the four following pieces are often grouped by editors as
the 'Lucy poems,' even though 'A slumber did my spirit seal' does not identify the 'she' who is
the subject of that poem. All but the last were written in 1799, while Wordsworth and his sister
were in Germany, and homesick. There has been diligent speculation about the identity of
Lucy, but it remains speculation. The one certainty is that she is not the girl of Wordsworth's
'Lucy Gray'" (Abrams 2000).
50. Wordsworth, William (4 January 1810). "French Revolution" (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Poe
ms_(Wordsworth,_1815)/Volume_2/French_Revolution). The Friend. No. 20. Retrieved 8 June
2018.

Further reading
poetry portal

Juliet Barker. Wordsworth: A Life, HarperCollins, New York, 2000, ISBN 978-0060787318
Jeffrey Cox, William Wordsworth, Second-Generation Romantic: Contesting Poetry After
Waterloo, 2021, ISBN 978-1108837613
Hunter Davies, William Wordsworth: A Biography, Frances Lincoln, London, 2009, ISBN 978-0-
7112-3045-3
Stephen Gill, William Wordsworth: A Life, Oxford University Press, 1989, ISBN 978-
0192827470
Emma Mason, The Cambridge Introduction to William Wordsworth (Cambridge University
Press, 2010)
Minto, William; Chisholm, Hugh (1911). "Wordsworth, William" (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1
911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Wordsworth,_William). In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.).
Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 28 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 826–831.
Mary Moorman, William Wordsworth, A Biography: The Early Years, 1770–1803 v. 1, Oxford
University Press, 1957, ISBN 978-0198115656
Mary Moorman, William Wordsworth: A Biography: The Later Years, 1803–1850 v. 2, Oxford
University Press, 1965, ISBN 978-0198116172
M. R. Tewari, One Interior Life—A Study of the Nature of Wordsworth's Poetic Experience
(New Delhi: S. Chand & Company Ltd, 1983)
Report to Wordsworth, Written by Boey Kim Cheng, as a direct reference to his poems
"Composed Upon Westminster Bridge" and "The World Is Too Much with Us"
Daniel Robinson, The Oxford Handbook of William Wordsworth, Oxford University Press, 2015,
ISBN 9780199662128
Duncan Wu, “William Wordsworth,” in Then & Now: Romantic-Era Poets in the Encyclopædia
Britannica, 1910-1911, ed. G. Kim Blank (2023) (https://eb11.uvic.ca/wordsworth_william.html)

External links
Internet archive of Volume 1 of Christopher Wordsworth's 1851 biography (https://archive.org/d
etails/memoirswilliamw00unkngoog)
Internet archive of Volume 2 of Christopher Wordsworth's 1851 biography (https://archive.org/d
etails/memoirsofwilliam02word2)
Works by William Wordsworth (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/2879) at Project
Gutenberg
Works by or about William Wordsworth (https://archive.org/search.php?query=%28%28subjec
t%3A%22Wordsworth%2C%20William%22%20OR%20subject%3A%22William%20Wordswort
h%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Wordsworth%2C%20William%22%20OR%20creator%3A%
22William%20Wordsworth%22%20OR%20creator%3A%22Wordsworth%2C%20W%2E%22%
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12/26/23, 1:27 AM William Wordsworth - Wikipedia

20OR%20title%3A%22William%20Wordsworth%22%20OR%20description%3A%22Wordswort
h%2C%20William%22%20OR%20description%3A%22William%20Wordsworth%22%29%20O
R%20%28%221770-1850%22%20AND%20Wordsworth%29%29%20AND%20%28-mediatyp
e:software%29) at Internet Archive
Works by William Wordsworth (https://librivox.org/author/1639) at LibriVox (public domain
audiobooks)
William Wordsworth Collection. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book andManuscript
Library, Yale University.
Cornelius Patton (AC 1883) William Wordsworth Manuscript Collection (https://archivesspace.a
mherst.edu/repositories/2/resources/246) at the Amherst College Archives & Special
Collections

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