William Wordsworth


William Wordsworth was born on the 7th April 1770 at Cockermouth in Cumberland, 
England.  He grew up in the beautiful lake district that was later to provide 
inspiration for much of his poetry and philosophy.  His early boyhood was 
marred by the tragedy that was to accompany him throughout life.  When he was 
just eight years old his mother died,  followed by his father five years later.
From a young age, he was very aware that the way in which he lived would have a 
profound influence upon his creativity.  He later put many of his experiences 
into the largely autobiographical poem, The Prelude, recognising that this was 
an unconventional method of writing poetry: "A thing unprecedented in literary 
history that a man should talk so much about himself."

Strong contemporary opinion held that to use poetry to describe normal, 
everyday occurrences was to demean the form.  Wordsworth, on the contrary, used 
poetry to exalt the everyday and commonplace, believing it represented the 
truest part of human nature.  In his poems: "Low and rustic life was generally 
chosen, because in that condition the essential passions of the heart find a 
better soil in which they can attain their maturity. . . in that condition the 
passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of 
nature."

At the age of 17, Wordsworth was admitted to Cambridge University, and his 
first published poem: Sonnet: On Seeing Miss Helen Maria Williams Weep at a 
Tale of Distress  was published in the same year. In 1790, with a college 
friend, Robert Jones,  Wordsworth made the first of many walking tours to 
France, also visiting Switzerland.  From this first visit, Wordsworth formed an 
attachment to France and a love for the country that was to stay with him all 
his life. After graduating, Wordsworth moved to France.

He had an affair with Annette Vallon in the spring of the following year at 
Blois.  On Dec 15th 1792, she gave birth to his illegitimate daughter Caroline. 
In 1793, Wordsworth returned to England.  From the following year he stayed 
with his sister, Dorothy, who lived with him for most of her life, even after 
his marriage.  In 1795 he was left 900 by Raisley Calvert, whom he had helped 
to nurse during a long sickness.  This was a considerable amount of money, and 
whilst he had never been poor, he became increasingly affluent.  He also met 
Samuel Taylor Coleridge in this year, and formed the basis of the friendship 
that would later result in the publication of the revolutionary Lyrical Ballads 
.

The poems that Wordsworth had begun to write were revolutionary for many 
reasons.  Most significantly, he succeeded in moving away from the conventional 
poetry written by his contemporaries.  He hated stylized and flowery poetry, 
and the use of rhetoric for the sake of rhetoric.  Wordsworth wanted to write 
simply, for the commemoration of nature and of humanity.  In the preface to 
Lyrical Ballads , he wrote: "The principal object, then, which I proposed to 
myself in these poems was to choose incidents and situations from common life 
and to relate or describe them throughout, as far as was possible in a 
selection of language really used by men." This may appear strange to the 
modern reader when considering, for example, I wandered lonely as a cloud,' 
perhaps the most famous of Wordsworth's poems. The metaphors he uses may not 
sound as if they relate to the voice of the common man, yet this poem 
illustrates the second half of his inspiration, celebration of nature, in a 
very personal manner. 

William Wordsworth was a strange mixture of realist and idealist. Although his 
life-philosophy was based upon a deep love for nature and for the common man, 
he himself came from more affluent society, and considered himself superior to 
those he romanticised, describing a poet as: "A man . . .  endued with more 
lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge 
of human nature and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common 
among mankind."  In spite of this, it was his greatest ambition to be simply: 
"A man speaking to men."

In 1802 he married Mary Hutchinson, with whom he had five children (two died in 
infancy and one later in life).  His brother John was killed in 1804.  In spite 
of his natural emotional distress, Wordsworth remained a prolific writer. More 
than any other poet, he illustrated the nature of the early English Romantic 
Movement.  The date usually given to the origin of the movement is 1798, the 
same year that Wordsworth and Coleridge completed their first edition of 
Lyrical Ballads .  The Romantic Movement was characterised by revolution - 
political and poetical: Through his poetry, Wordsworth responded to the changes 
taking place in his society - namely, the repressive measures introduced by the 
English government in response to the Revolution in France.

He stood at the forefront of English intellectuals who supported the French 
Revolution and felt that it represented a shift in the power balance towards 
the working classes, and would therefore be desirable in England. He reacted 
strongly against the move away from rural life towards the greater urbanisation 
of the population believing that uniformity of industrial occupation and the 
desire for more technical information were killing off the finer instincts 
found in mankind - the purer feelings characterised by a rural idyll.

In 1835 his sister Dorothy had a complete mental breakdown, from which she 
never recovered.  This seemed to mark a turning point in his life.  He lost 
much of his radicalism, and conformed more and more with the social position he 
occupied, rather than with his youthful ideals. In 1843 he became poet 
Laureate.  Two years later he attended the Queen's Ball in London.  Both of 
these actions were considered by the second generation romantic poets - Keats, 
Shelley and Byron, as a betrayal of what the Romantic movement stood for. On 
the 23 April 1850, at the age of 80, Wordsworth died.

By using the imagery of nature, Wordsworth had striven to rediscover something 
that he felt his generation had lost.  He believed: "Poetry is the spontaneous 
overflow of powerful feelings: It takes its origin from emotion recollected in 
tranquillity".

As he grew older, however, his emotions and passions had mellowed and his verse 
grew more akin to that he had earlier rejected. Even his earlier poetry was not 
seen by everyone as being merit-worthy.  Due to the originality of its form and 
content, Wordsworth's contribution to literature was not always recognised.  
Hazlitt, a contemporary writer and critic, said of his poems in 1825: "The 
vulgar do not read them: the learned . . . do not understand them, the great 
despise [and] the fashionable . . . ridicule them."

Today, Wordsworth's enormous contribution to poetry is generally recognised.  
His work may appear rhetorical and artificial by modern standards - after all 
it is two hundred years old - but he created the potential for a true form of 
poetry for the people.  A poetry that can be used as a common language of 
emotion and perception and that does not depend upon education or social 
status, either for creation or comprehension.