William Wordsworth Page 2

Short biography of William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, Cumberland, on April 7, 1770, the second child of an attorney. Unlike the other major English romantic poets, he enjoyed a happy childhood under the loving care of his mother and was very close to his sister Dorothy. His father died when William was 8, and his mother when he was 13; Dorothy became his guardian. When he was at Hawkshead Grammar School, in Lancashire, his love of nature was already evident in his poems, which were published anonymously in the school magazine. In 1787, he went to St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he became friends with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and in 1791 he published a volume of poems, An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches, which met with little success.In 1795, Wordsworth and Coleridge published a joint volume of poetry, Lyrical Ballads, with a few other poems. It was on this journey that Wordsworth began the first draft of “The Prelude,” a poem that was not published until after his death. After a brief stay in Germany with his sister, in 1799 he returned to England and settled at Dove Cottage, near Grasmere, in the Lake District, with his sister and her husband, William Hutchinson.

This was to be his home for the rest of his life.In 1802, he traveled to France, where he met and fell in love with Annette Vallon, a Frenchwoman with whom he had a daughter, Caroline. He returned to England in 1802 and in 1803 published Poems in Two Volumes, which included “The Prelude.” In 1807, he married his childhood friend Mary Hutchinson, and they had five children.In 1813, he published Poems, Chiefly of Early and Late Years, which included The Excursion, a long philosophical poem in blank verse. The following year he published The White Doe of Rylstone, and in 1815 he published The Prelude, a semi-autobiographical poem of his life and development as a poet, considered to be one of the greatest long poems in the English language. In 1819, he published Peter Bell the Weaver, a political satire, and in 1820 he published Home at Grasmere, a collection of love poems to his wife.In 1843, he published The Recluse, a poem in three parts, of which only the first two, The Excursion, were completed. Wordsworth was appointed poet laureate in 1843, and in 1850 he published a collection of his earlier poems. He died at Rydal Mount, in the Lake District, on April 23, 1850.

General Essay Structure for this Topic

1. The Relationship Between William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
2. The Impact of William Wordsworth on Samuel Taylor Coleridge
3. The Influence of Samuel Taylor Coleridge on William Wordsworth
4. The Friendship of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
5. The Poetry of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
6. The Lives of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
7. The Minds of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
8. The Correspondence of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
9. The Commonalities of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Important information

Spouse: Mary Hutchinson (m. 1802–1850)