Biography of William Wordsworth.

William Wordsworth

Biography

William Wordsworth was born April 7th, 1770, in Cockermouth, Cumberland. He attended school at Saint John's College, University of Cambridge. He was said to have loved nature. During school breaks he visited places known for their scenic beauty. While in France, he fell in love with Annette Vallon. They had a daughter in December of 1770, shortly before he moved back to England.

Wordsworth had written poetry while he was still a schoolboy, but none of his poems were published until 1793.His first published poems were An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches. These poems exhibit the influence of the formal way of poetry in England throughout the 18th century.

Wordsworth had met Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a fellow poet, and in 1797 Woodsworth moved to Alfoxden, Somersetshire, alongside his sister Dorthy. Their residence was near Coleridge's home in Nether Stowey. This move created a sustained friendship between Wordsworth and Coleridge, and they both worked on a volume of poems entitled Lyrical Ballads, which was published 1798.

Wordsworth on Helvellyn

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1795, by Peter Vandyke

Lyrical Ballads is said to have indicated the beginning of the Romantic Movement in English poetry. Wordsworth wrote the majority of the poems in the book, such as "Tintern Abbey". Coleridge's main contribution was Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Lyrical Ballads was met with hostility from most critics, as it represented an uprising against contemporary English poetry.

In justification of his unconventional philosophy of poetry, Wordsworth wrote a "Preface" to the second edition of Ballads, which emerged in 1800. His idea was that the basis of poetic genuineness was the sincere occurrence of the sense. He said that poetry derives from "emotion recollected in tranquility." He insisted that the scenes and actions of every-day life and the speech of common people were the basic material of which poetry should...