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Biography of William Wordsworth, 1770-1850

"Many of us will feel that Wordsworth is the poet to read, and grow thereby. He, almost more than any other English poet of the last century, has proved himself a power, and a power for good, making for whatever is true, pure, simple, teachable; for what is supersensuous, at any rate, if not spiritual." (Charlotte Mason, Formation of Character, p. 225)

"A Heart That Watches and Receives": Biographical Sketch by Donna-Jean Breckenridge

Wordsworth.

Just think of it! A poet whose name evokes what he does, in that he takes words and makes them worthy. Wordsworth means the Lake District, a sleep and a forgetting, first-born affinities, the child is father of the man, a violet in a mossy stone, and always, a host of golden daffodils. Wordsworth's poetry includes approachable nature, recognizable emotions, and a picture of the relationship between the two. And sometimes he does it all "within the sonnet's scanty ground."

William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, England, in 1770, in what is now referred to as Cumbria, in the scenic Lake District. He was the second of five children; his sister Dorothy, a poet in her own right, was born just a year after William and they were close all their lives. Their father, whose job took him away from the family for long stretches of time, provided his children with a home that included a library and a situation beside the Derwent River. So William grew up with access to great books and a rural paradise, and his poetry reflected that.

However, William's mother Ann's death in 1778 disrupted their home, and Dorothy was sent away to live with a series of relatives. William and Dorothy were not reunited for nine years. In the meantime, his schooling continued, culminating with a tour of the Alps before his final year as a sizar at St. John's College (a sizar was someone who received financial help).

It was during that and a subsequent trip to the Continent that Wordsworth felt a passion for the French Revolution, democracy, and a woman named Annette. And it was these trips that furthered the poetry he had already begun to write in his earlier years. Once back in England, a chance meeting shaped the course of Wordsworth's life and poetry -- for it was there that William and Dorothy met Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Wordsworth and Coleridge inspired each other, critiqued each other's work, and eventually published "Lyrical Ballads" together, a collection of poems considered as the beginning of the Romantic Era. The two men, along with mutual friend Robert Southey, came to be known as the "Lake Poets."

A positive change in financial stability allowed William to marry Mary Hutchinson in 1802, and they had five children, of which two died in childhood. Wordsworth's writing in these years included the well-known "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood." Charlotte Mason, in "Home Education," called this "that great ode, which next after the Bible, shows the deepest insight into what is peculiar to the children in their nature and estate."

He also continued work on an autobiographical poem later named "The Prelude," though it was never named as such by Wordsworth himself. He and his family referred to it as "the poem to Coleridge," "the poem on his own early life," or (in a letter to T. N. Talfourd, dated April 11, 1839) "a long poem upon the formation of my own mind." Today we speak of the 1805 and the 1850 Prelude, the first and last versions of its complete text. Mary Wordsworth published it a few months after William's death; it is considered his magnum opus (most important work).

William Wordsworth was named Poet Laureate of England in 1843, and he died in 1850.