William Wordsworth 1770-1850
William Wordsworth was born at Cockermouth, Cumberland, the son of a legal agent for the 1st Earl of Lonsdale and a customs official. He was educated at Hawkshead grammar school and at St. John's College, Cambridge. Both his parents died by the time he was thirteen and he was brought up by relatives.
He spent some time in France shortly after the French Revolution whose cause he espoused and in 1797 moved to Somerset with his favourite sister, Dorothy, where he developed a close association with Coleridge.
Generally considered the greatest of the Romantic poets, Wordsworth's most creative poetry is his early work with its main themes of the English countryside and the revolutionary spirit of the age. Of his later work, The Prelude, published posthumously, is the most significant. He became Poet Laureate in 1843.
Works include
Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey
Lucy (ii) also known as The Lost Love
On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic, 1802
Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
Books you might enjoy
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Unruly Times: Wordsworth and Coleridge in Their Time
Selected Poetry (Oxford World's Classics)