Biography of William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth was born on April 17, 1770, in Cockermouth, Cumberland County, England. Wordsworth was the second of seven children born to Christopher and Anne Cookson Wordsworth. Both parents passed away by the time he was 13. After being raised by different relatives for a time, Wordsworth was sent away to Hawkshead Grammar School in the Lake District in northwest England. There, he received a prestigious education in literature and the classics while also indulging in the beauty of the English countryside. His environment fostered a love of nature which would later become an important theme in his poetry.

In 1787, Wordsworth moved on to St. John’s College in Cambridge. Uninterested in the competitive nature of the university, he did not take his studies seriously, and instead began to write poetry. In 1790, Wordsworth decided to take an extended walking tour through revolutionary France during his summer break. Inspired by the political climate there, he became a republican sympathizer. Upon his college graduation, he returned to France and met Annette Vallon. They began a passionate affair and had a daughter named Caroline. Shortly after Caroline’s birth, Wordsworth ran out of money and was forced to return to England. The war between the two countries prevented him from marrying Annette, and he would not return to France until 1802.

In 1795, a relative’s legacy allowed him to purchase a house and thus to reunite with his beloved sister Dorothy. The brother and sister eventually settled in Somerset together, where they moved close to the home of poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Wordsworth and Coleridge formed a mutually beneficial and inspirational relationship, eventually beginning the English Romantic movement with the publication of their Lyrical Ballads in 1798. The book includes Wordsworth's "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey" and Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," arguably their two most famous works respectively. In 1798, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Dorothy moved to Germany, where Wordsworth began work on The Prelude, and a group of poems known as the "Lucy Poems." In 1799 Wordsworth returned to the Lake District, where he would live for the remainder of his life. Wordsworth, along with Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey, became known as a "Lakeland Poet" because of the area where he lived—renowned for its wild landscapes, charming pastures, and countless lakes.

In 1802, after amicably separating from Anne Vallon, Wordsworth married a childhood friend named Mary Hutchinson. He and Mary had five children, although two of them died tragically in 1812. Wordsworth finally settled with his family and sister in Grasmere, England. He became widely successful and was named poet laureate in 1843, succeeding Robert Southey. William Wordsworth died on April 23, 1850 of pleurisy. He is buried at St. Oswald's Church, in Grasmere. His great autobiographical poem, The Prelude, was published posthumously.