Poet William Wordsworth died on April 23, 1850 in
Cumberland, England. He was a major
English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic
Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads. He was born on April 7, 1770, in
Cockermouth, Cumberland, to John and Anne (Cookson) Wordsworth, the second of
their five children. His father was law agent and rent collector for Lord
Lonsdale, and the family was fairly well off. After his mother's death in 1778
he was sent to Hawkshead Grammar School, near Windermere; in 1787 he went St.
John’s College, Cambridge. He enjoyed hiking: during the "long"
(i.e., summer) vacation of 1788 he tramped around Cumberland county; two years
later went on a walking tour of France, Switzerland, and Germany; and in 1791,
after graduation, trekked through Wales.
His enthusiasm for the French Revolution took him to
France again in 1791, where he had an affair with Annette Vallon, who bore him
an illegitimate daughter, Caroline, in 1792. Having run out of money,
Wordsworth returned to England the following year, and the Anglo-French war,
following the Reign of Terror, prevented his return for nine years. In 1794 he
was reunited with his sister Dorothy, who became his companion, close friend,
moral support, and housekeeper until her physical and mental decline in the
1830s.
The next year he met Coleridge, and the three of them
grew very close, the two men meeting daily in 1797-98 to talk about poetry. The
three friends traveled to Germany that fall, a trip that produced intellectual
stimulation for Coleridge and homesickness for Wordsworth. After their return,
William and Dorothy settled in his beloved Lake District, near Grasmere. The
Peace of Amiens in 1802 allowed Wordsworth and his sister to visit France again
to see Annette and Caroline. They arrived at a mutually agreeable settlement,
and a few months later, after receiving an inheritance owed by Lord Lonsdale
since John Wordsworth's death in 1783, William married Mary Hutchinson. By 1810
they had five children, but their happiness was tempered by the loss at sea of
William's brother John (1805), the alienation from Coleridge in 1810, and the
death of two children in 1812. In 1813 Wordsworth received an appointment as
Distributor of Stamps for Westmorland, which him financially secure. The whole
family, which included Dorothy, moved to Rydal Mount, between Grasmere and
Rydal Water.
Wordsworth's literary career began with Descriptive
Sketches (1793) and reached an early climax before the turn of the century,
with Lyrical Ballads. His powers peaked with Poems in Two Volumes
(1807), and his reputation continued to grow; even his harshest reviewers
recognized his popularity and the originality. The important later works were
well under way. His success with shorter forms made him the more eager to
succeed with longer, specifically with a long, three-part "philosophical
poem, containing views of Man, Nature, and Society, having for its principal
subject the sensations and opinions of a poet living in retirement." The
17,000 lines which were eventually published made up only a part of this
mammoth project. The second section, The Excursion, was completed (pub.
1814), as was the first book of the first part, The Recluse. During his
lifetime he refused to print The Prelude, which he had completed by
1805, because he thought it was unprecedented for a poet to talk as much about
himself — unless he could put it in its proper setting, which was as an
introduction to the complete three-part Recluse. Inspiration gradually
failed him for this project, and he spent much of his later life revising The
Prelude. Finally fully reconciled to Coleridge, the two of them toured the
Rhineland in 1828. Durham University granted him an honorary Doctor of Civil
Law degree in 1838, and Oxford conferred the same honor the next year. When
Robert Southey died in 1843, Wordsworth was named Poet Laureate. William Wordsworth
died on April 23, 1850, and his wife published the much-revised Prelude
that summer.
Michael Thomas
Barry is the author of Great Britain’s Literary Legends.
The book can be purchased from Amazon through the following links:
