Birth
William Wordsworth was born at Cockermouth in
Cumberland, son of John Wordsworth, who worked as an agent and rent collector
for Sir James
Lowther.
Childhood and education
His mother died in 1778 (8), and in the same year he was sent as a
boarder to Hawkshead
Grammar School. His father died in 1783 (13), at which time Sir James owed
him some £4000, but he refused to honour the debt. Responsibility for William
and his brothers passed to his mother’s brother, Christopher Cookson, an
unhappy arrangement for the children, who found their guardian unsympathetic.
Hawkshead School, on the other hand, under the headship of William Taylor, was a
progressive and liberally oriented establishment, where reading in mathematics
and the sciences was encouraged. He attended St
John’s College, Cambridge, from 1787 (17) to 1791 (21), visiting France,
at that time in the midst of revolutionary turmoil, and Switzerland in 1790 (20)
with his friend Robert
Jones.
Second visit to France and affair with Annette Vallon
He visited France again after graduation, and during this second
visit was befriended by Michel
Beaupuy, through whom he came to share the ideals of the French Revolution.
Whilst in Orléans he had an affair with Annette
Vallon, who bore him a child.
He returns to England and radical ideas
Financial problems and the political situation
forced him to return to England, where he began to give wholehearted support to
the radical philosophy of Thomas
Paine and William
Godwin, openly expressing their ideas in his own poetry.
Wordsworth, Coleridge and Lyrical Ballads
At the invitation
of John and Azariah
Pinney he moved with his sister Dorothy
to Racedown Lodge on the Devon / Somerset border, and here met the poet Samuel
Taylor Coleridge. He then moved closer to Coleridge at Alfoxden House, and
they collaborated on and published Lyrical Ballads (1798, 28), which
began with Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner and ended with
Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey. Wordsworth later wrote a preface for the Ballads,
which set out his theory of poetry, and progressively marginalised and finally
eliminated Coleridge’s work.
Germany and the Lake District
Later that year the Wordsworths made a trip to
Germany with Coleridge, and, on their return, moved to Dove Cottage, Grasmere,
in the Lake District. From about 1798 Wordsworth worked on a large philosophical
and autobiographical poem, The Prelude, which was not published until
1850 (d).
Marriage
He married Mary Hutchinson in 1802 (32), and acquired two patrons in Sir
George Beaumont and Sir
William Lowther, the latter settling his cousin’s debt to Wordsworth.
His brother drowns at sea
His
brother John was drowned at sea in 1805 (35).
His ménage à quatre
His sister Dorothy continued to
live with Wordsworth, along with his new wife and her sister, Sara Hutchinson.
They were often visited by Coleridge, who had moved to the Lake District with
his wife, and who had become emotionally involved with Sara Hutchinson.
Poems in Two Volumes
Wordsworth published Poems in Two Volumes in 1807 (37) in an edition of
1000, 230 of which were still unsold in 1814. The volume received a critical
drubbing from the Edinburgh
Review.
He argues with Coleridge
He severed his connection with Coleridge in 1810 (40), partly
because of that poet’s continued addiction to opium.
Wordsworth the family man and distributor of stamps
He now had five children,
two of whom died in 1812 (42). In 1813 (43) he moved to Rydal Mount, Ambleside,
and was appointed the official distributor of stamps for Westmoreland with a
salary of £400 a year.
The Excursion and other poetry
In 1814 (44) he published The Excursion, 9000
lines of poetry in nine volumes, which aroused little interest, followed by The
White Doe of Rylstone (1815, 45), Peter Bell (1819, 49) and Benjamin
the Waggoner (1819, 49). He continued to be criticised for his low subjects
and ‘simplicity’. Thereafter he became more interested in reworking,
ordering and anthologising his work in various collected editions.
Poet Laureate
He became
Poet Laureate in 1843 (73).
Death
He died in 1850 (80) and was buried in Grasmere
churchyard.
William Wordsworth Biography : Links
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