William Wordsworth (1770–1850) was the leading poet of English Romanticism. With Coleridge he published Lyrical Ballads in 1798, which sought to write about ordinary life in the language of ordinary people. Poet of the Lake District, of nature and memory, author of The Prelude and of the famous poem about daffodils, he became Poet Laureate in 1843.
Works
Poems, in Two Volumes
The Lake District
Wordsworth was born in 1770 at Cockermouth, in Cumberland, on the edge of the Lake District. His mother died when he was eight and his father five years later. At school in Hawkshead he roamed the hills and lakes, experiences he later described in The Prelude.
After Cambridge he spent a year in France in 1791–92, inspired by the Revolution. In Orléans and Blois he fell in love with Annette Vallon, who bore him a daughter, Caroline, but war between Britain and France separated them.
Lyrical Ballads
In 1795 Wordsworth settled with his beloved sister Dorothy, a gifted writer whose journals record their walks, in the west of England, where they befriended Coleridge. Lyrical Ballads, published anonymously in 1798, included Tintern Abbey; the 1800 edition added a preface defending a poetry of ordinary experience.
In 1799 William and Dorothy moved to Dove Cottage in Grasmere, in the Lake District. In 1802 he married Mary Hutchinson, a childhood friend. Poems in Two Volumes appeared in 1807, including the ode on Intimations of Immortality.
The Prelude and the laureateship
For most of his life Wordsworth worked on The Prelude, a long autobiographical poem on the growth of a poet's mind, addressed to Coleridge. He kept revising it and never published it; it appeared only after his death, in 1850.
His later years were more conservative and his poetry less admired, but his fame grew. He moved to Rydal Mount, near Grasmere, and succeeded his friend Robert Southey as Poet Laureate in 1843. He died in 1850 and is buried in Grasmere churchyard.
Anecdotes
Dorothy's daffodils
On 15 April 1802, William and Dorothy Wordsworth saw a long belt of daffodils along the shore of Ullswater. Dorothy described them in her journal as dancing and laughing with the wind; two years later William turned the memory into his most famous poem, borrowing several of her images.
Dove Cottage
Dove Cottage, the small former inn in Grasmere where William and Dorothy lived from 1799 to 1808, is now a museum. Thomas De Quincey, the author of Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, later rented it.
Frequently asked questions
What are Wordsworth's most famous poems?
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, Tintern Abbey, the Immortality Ode, The Solitary Reaper, Composed upon Westminster Bridge and The Prelude.
What is The Prelude?
A long autobiographical poem in blank verse on Wordsworth's childhood, youth and development as a poet, published after his death in 1850.
Who was Dorothy Wordsworth?
William's sister and lifelong companion, whose journals of their life in the Lake District inspired several of his poems.