William Wordsworth
(1770–1850)

William Wordsworth was one of England's greatest poets and the pioneer of the Romantic movement. His approach to poetry rejected the complex forms and subjects of his time period. Instead, Wordsworth placed his reliance on the imagination and simplicity of expression. He devoted much of his literature to the celebration of the "incidents and situations from common life."

Wordsworth was born in 1770 in northwest England, near the Lake District. By the time he was a teenager, both his parents had died. At grammar school, the boy became a keen observer of nature, an avid reader, and a budding poet. At the age of seventeen, he entered St. John's College, Cambridge, and he graduated in 1791.

In 1791–1792, Wordsworth traveled to France, which was in revolutionary turmoil. He met and fell in love with Annette Vallon, but their plans to marry were frustrated by Wordsworth's lack of funds, and he returned to England. Soon afterwards, war between France and England broke out.

Wordsworth was a strong supporter of the ideals of the French Revolution: liberty, equality, and universal brotherhood. However, these ideals soon crumbled amid the hatred and tyranny of the Reign of Terror in France (1793–1794). Wordsworth's guilt over his affair with Annette Vallon and his political disillusionment brought him to the verge of an emotional collapse.

In 1795, together with his beloved sister Dorothy, Wordsworth settled in a cottage in Dorset, where he slowly recovered from his depression. It was during this period that Wordsworth first met the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who was to have a great influence on Wordsworth's literary career. The two men met frequently, talked for hours about poetry, and composed at a startling rate. Their collaboration resulted in a small volume, anonymously published in 1798, called Lyrical Ballads with a Few Other Poems.

Lyrical Ballads was a landmark work. It represented a revolt against the artificial Neoclassicism of the previous generation. In 1800, Wordsworth published a second edition containing the famous "Preface," which served as an outline and defense of his poetic ideals. The heart of Wordsworth's theory was his doctrine that good poetry is the "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" that "takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity."

In 1799, Wordsworth and Dorothy settled at Grasmere in the Lake District, where he would spend the remainder of his life. In 1802, he married Mary Hutchinson. Over the next few decades, Wordsworth became increasingly prosperous and politically conservative. In 1843, Wordsworth was named Poet Laureate. He died in 1850, at the age of 80, and was buried in Grasmere churchyard.

Critics generally agree that Wordsworth's long poem The Prelude is the greatest achievement of his career, although this work was unknown to the public until after the poet's death in 1850. The Prelude is an introspective account of Wordsworth's development as a poet.

The French Revolution erupted on July 14, 1789, with the storming of the Bastille, a fortress in Paris used as a prison. English liberals and radicals such as Wordsworth were strong supporters of the democratic aims of the Revolution's first phase. The widespread optimism of this period is reflected in two lines from Wordsworth's The Prelude:

Bliss was it in that dawn
to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!

Although lofty expectations of political reform were dashed by the violent course the Revolution took in 1793–1794, the hope of a better future remained. The Romantic poets were unable to change the state of social affairs, but under the guidance of Wordsworth and Coleridge, they revolutionized the theory and practice of poetry.

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