William Wordsworth

1770-1850, English poet of the early Romantic movement.

Life

William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770. His parents John and Ann Wordsworth lived in Cockermouth back then, a small town in Cumberland, England. Working as an attorney and later appointed law agent and land stewart (Masson 5), William's father had good connections in society despite his very young age (Gill 1). William, his three brothers and his sister Dorothy lost their mother in March 1778. John Wordsworth died six years later at the age of 42. Together with his older brother Richard, William was sent to Hawkshead boarding-school in Lancashire in 1778. He left school at the age of seventeen.

From 1787 on William Wordsworth attended St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he also started writing. However, the young man could not quite adapt to the old college. "He found himself imprisoned within ancient walls, and required to submit to the diginified authority that is based on old systems and older traditions" (Masson 15). As Wordsworth eventually lost any serious academic interest, he decided to go to France in 1790 where he got into contact with the enthusiasm of the French Revolution and republican ideas. [1]

In France he met Annette Vallon, who gave birth to their daughter Caroline in 1792. They did not marry for the outbreak of the war between France and Britain disrupted their relationship. William did not meet his daughter until she was nine years old. Back in Cambridge, William did not follow any career options - except for writing - rather he developed a resistance "to having his life shaped for him by those he did not like and in ways he could not approve" (Gill 40). "Unprepared for any profession, rootless, virtually penniless, bitterly hostile to his own country’s opposition to the French, he lived in London in the company of radicals like William Godwin and learned to feel a profound sympathy for the abandoned mothers, beggars, children, vagrants, and victims of England’s wars who began to march through the sombre poems he began writing at this time." [2]

His reunion with his sister Dorothy Wordsworth in 1795 ended this dark period. The siblings moved to Alfoxden House, near Bristol, and did not part for life. In 1798, Wordsworth's friendship with poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge developed, which "would change both poets’ lives and alter the course of English poetry"[3]. William married Mary Hutchinson, a childhood friend in 1802. They had three sons and two daughters.

Criticised by fellow poets and contemporaries at first William Wordsworth could eventually gain a high reputation, especially after he published The River Duddon in 1820.[4]

During his last years he undertook major reworks of his poems. From 1843 until his death in 1850 Wordsworth held the title of poet laureate.

Works

Together with his friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge William Wordsworth published Lyrical Ballads (1798) which is seen as the beginning of Romanticism in English literature. "Most of the poems were dramatic in form, designed to reveal the character of the speaker. The manifesto and the accompanying poems thus set forth a new style, a new vocabulary, and new subjects for poetry, all of them foreshadowing 20th-century developments."[5]

The poet's works comprises numerous poems, sonnets, odes and ballads. Nature imagese and spirit were key elements in his writings (Riasanovsky 22). Another important contribution to the Romantic Age is the concept of emotional permanence emphasising human emotions and human rights (Wordsworth et al. 38).

Another major work is The Prelude (1850), an (semi-)autobiographical poem, which he reworked his whole life and was not published until his death.

His life as a poet can be roughly divided into two phases: "the young Romantic revolutionary and the aging Tory humanist"[6].

Reflection

"William Wordsworth's life spans a transformation in almost every sphere of human existence: political, social, economic, and cultural. He was born [...] into a world on the threshold of dramatic, sometimes violent, change." (Wordsworth et al. 1)

[He] was the central figure in the English Romantic revolution in poetry."[7]

"One of the great poets of England and the world, Wordsworth has been especially acclaimed as a poet of nature" (Riasanovsky 14).

Sources

"William Wordsworth." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2010. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 25 Jan. 2010 <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/647975/William-Wordsworth>.

Gill, Stephen. William Wordsworth. A Life. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.

Masson, Rosaline. Wordsworth. London: T.C. & E.C. Jack, 1912.

Riasanovsky, Nicholas V. The Emergence of Romanticism. New York/ Oxford: OUP, 1992, 7-39.

Wordsworth, Jonathan, Michael C. Jaye, and Robert Woof eds. William Wordsworth and the Age of English Romanticism. 2nd ed. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1988.