William Wordsworth (7 April 1770 23 April 1850) 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.
Wordsworth's magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude, a semiautobiographical
poem of his early years which he revised and expanded a number of times. It was posthumously
titled and published, prior to which it was generally known as "the poem to Coleridge".
Wordsworth was Britain's Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death in 1850.

EARLY LIFE
The second of five children born to John Wordsworth and Ann Cookson, William Wordsworth
was born on 7 April 1770 in Wordsworth House in Cockermouth, Cumberland
[1]
part of the
scenic region in northwest England, the Lake District. His sister, the poet and diarist Dorothy
Wordsworth, to whom he was close all his life, was born the following year, and the two were
baptised together. They had three other siblings: Richard, the eldest, who became a lawyer;
John, born after Dorothy, who went to sea and died in 1805 when the ship of which he was
Master, the Earl of Abergavenny, was wrecked off the south coast of England; and Christopher,
the youngest, who entered the Church and rose to be Master of Trinity College,
Cambridge.
[2]
Their father was a legal representative of James Lowther, 1st Earl of
Lonsdale and, through his connections, lived in a large mansion in the small town. Wordsworth,
as with his siblings, had little involvement with their father, and they would be distant from him
until his death in 1783.
[3]
Wordsworth made his debut as a writer in 1787 when he published a sonnet in The European
Magazine. That same year he began attending St John's College, Cambridge, and received his
B.A. degree in 1791.
[6]
He returned to Hawkshead for his first two summer holidays, and often
spent later holidays on walking tours, visiting places famous for the beauty of their landscape. In
1790, he took a walking tour of Europe, during which he toured the Alps extensively, and visited
nearby areas of France, Switzerland, and Italy.
IN 1802, Lowther's heir, William Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale, paid the 4,000 debt owed to
Wordsworth's father incurred through Lowther's failure to pay his aide.
[13]
It was this
repayment that afforded Wordsworth the financial means to marry, and on 4 October,
following his visit with Dorothy to France to arrange matters with Annette, Wordsworth
married a childhood friend, Mary Hutchinson.
[7]
Dorothy continued to live with the couple and
grew close to Mary. The following year, Mary gave birth to the first of five children, three of
whom predeceased William and Mary:
MARRIAGE
John Wordsworth (18 June 1803 1875). Married four times:
1. Isabella Curwen (d. 1848) had six children: Jane, Henry, William, John, Charles and
Edward.
2. Helen Ross (d. 1854). No children
3. Mary Ann Dolan (d. after 1858) had one daughter Dora (b. 1858).
4. Mary Gamble. No children
Life and Works
In 1791 he graduated from Cambridge and traveled abroad. While in France he fell in love with
Annette Vallon, who bore him a daughter, Caroline, in 1792. Although he did not marry her, it seems
to have been circumstance rather than lack of affection that separated them. Throughout his life he
supported Annette and Caroline as best he could, finally settling a sum of money on them in 1835.
The spirit of the French Revolution had strongly influenced Wordsworth, and he returned (1792) to
England imbued with the principles of Rousseau and republicanism. In 1793 were published An
Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches, written in the stylized idiom and vocabulary of the 18th cent.
The outbreak of the Reign of Terror prevented Wordsworth's return to France, and after receiving
several small legacies, he settled with his sister Dorothy in Dorsetshire. Wordsworth was
extraordinarily close to his sister. Throughout his life she was his constant and devoted companion,
sharing his poetic vision and helping him with his work.
In Dorsetshire Wordsworth became the intimate friend of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and, probably
under his influence, a student of David Hartley's empiricist philosophy. Together the two poets
wrote Lyrical Ballads (1798), in which they sought to use the language of ordinary people in poetry; it
included Wordsworth's poem "Tintern Abbey." The work introduced romanticism into England and
became a manifesto for romantic poets. In 1799 he and his sister moved to the Lake District of
England, where they lived the remainder of their lives. A second edition of the Lyrical Ballads (1800),
which included a critical essay outlining Wordsworth's poetic principles, in particular his ideas about
poetic diction and meter, was unmercifully attacked by critics.
In 1802 Wordsworth married Mary Hutchinson, an old school friend; the union was evidently a happy
one, and the couple had four children. The Prelude, his long autobiographical poem, was completed
in 1805, though it was not published until after his death. His next collection, Poems in Two
Volumes (1807), included the well-known "Ode to Duty," the "Ode: Intimations of Immortality," and a
number of famous sonnets.
Thereafter, Wordsworth's creative powers diminished. Nonetheless, some notable poems were
produced after this date, including The Excursion (1814), "Laodamia" (1815), "White Doe of Rylstone"
(1815), Memorials of a Tour of the Continent, 1820 (1822), and "Yarrow Revisited" (1835). In 1842
Wordsworth was given a civil list pension, and the following year, having long since put aside radical
sympathies, he was named poet laureate.
ACHIEVEMENTS
William Wordsworth received an honorary Doctor of Civil Law degree in 1838 from Durham University,
and the same honor from Oxford University the next year. In 1842 the government awarded him a civil
list pension



DEATH
William Wordsworth died by aggravating a case of pleurisy on 23 April 1850, and was buried
at St. Oswald's church in Grasmere. His widow Mary published his lengthy autobiographical
"poem to Coleridge" as The Prelude several months after his death. Though this failed to arouse
great interest in 1850, it has since come to be recognised as his masterpiece.