A Short Biography
William Wordsworth was born in 1770 in Cockermouth, Cumbria. His father, John Wordsworth, was a law-agent for the main landowner of the region and was married to Ann Cookson. William was born in a family of four boys and a girl. He was separated from his sister, Dorothy Wordsworth, at the age of eight. Dorothy and William spent nine years apart when their mother got sick and by the time he turned thirteen, he was an orphan. He attended a boarding school at Hawkshead in the Lake District where he studied five years before going to Cambridge where he graduated. He completed the 'Grand Tour' through Europe which was an essential step in one's education at the time; it is during this tour that he was exposed to the French Revolution and its interest for the common person which would greatly impact his own poetry. In 1794, William moved with Dorothy to the Lake District, besides one interruption, and although they moved around, they lived together for the rest of their lives even after William married his wife Mary Hutchinson. They all lived together and Dorothy never got married. In 1795, Wordsworth met Coleridge in London which is also a key moment in Wordsworth's personal life and poetical development as they became friends and wrote The Lyrical Ballads together. He also wrote The Prelude which was named as such only after his death and which was an autobiographical poem. He became England's Poet Laureate in 1843 and died in 1850 in his home, in Westmorland.
References:
Hayden, Benjamin Robert. William Wordsworth. 1842. Oil on Canvas. National Portrait Gallery, London, England.
Kneale, J. Douglas. 'Wordsworth, William', Encyclopedia of Romanticism: Culture in Britain, 1780s-1830s, ed. Laura Dabundo, 1992.
Hayden, Benjamin Robert. William Wordsworth. 1842. Oil on Canvas. National Portrait Gallery, London, England.
Kneale, J. Douglas. 'Wordsworth, William', Encyclopedia of Romanticism: Culture in Britain, 1780s-1830s, ed. Laura Dabundo, 1992.