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William Wordsworth
：
William Wordsworth (7 April
1770
–
23 April 1850) was a
major English
Romantic poet who, with
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped launch the
Romantic Age in English literature with
their 1798 joint publication, Lyrical
Ballads.
Wordsworth's masterpiece is generally
considered to be The Prelude, a semi
autobiographical poem of his early
years which the poet revised and expanded
a number of times. The work was
posthumously titled and published, prior to
which it was generally known as the
poem
England's Poet Laureate from 1843
until his death in 1850.
Biography
：
Early life and education
The
second of five children born to John Wordsworth
and Ann Cookson,
William Wordsworth was
born on 7 April 1770 in Cockermouth in Cumberland
—
part of the scenic region
in north-west 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. All of his
siblings were destined to have
successful careers. His elder brother
Richard became a lawyer in London;
John
Wordsworth rose to the rank of Captain on a
merchantman of the East
India Company;
and the youngest of the family, Christopher,
became Master of
Trinity College at
Cambridge. After the death of their mother in
1778, their
father sent William to
Hawkshead Grammar School and sent Dorothy to live
with relatives in Yorkshire. She and
William did not meet again for another nine
years. His father died when he was
13.[1]
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.[2] 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 also visited nearby areas of
France, Switzerland, and Italy. His youngest
brother, Christopher, rose to be Master
of Trinity College.
Relationship with Annette Vallon
In November 1791, Wordsworth visited
Revolutionary France and became
enthralled with the Republican
movement. He fell in love with a French woman,
Annette Vallon, who in 1792 gave birth
to their child, Caroline. Because of lack
of money and Britain's tensions with
France, he returned alone to England the
next year.[4] The circumstances of his
return and his subsequent behaviour
raise doubts as to his declared wish to
marry Annette but he supported her and