William wordworth biography

They walked in the area for about two hours daily, and the nearby hills consoled Dorothy as she pined for the fells of her native Lakeland. She wrote. These delight me the most as they remind me of our native wilds. Together Wordsworth and Coleridge with insights from Dorothy produced Lyrical Balladsan important work in the English Romantic movement.

One of Wordsworth's most famous poems, " Tintern Abbey ", was published in this collection, along with Coleridge's " The Rime of the Ancient Mariner ". The second edition, published inhad only Wordsworth listed as the author and included a preface to the poems. Wordsworth also gives his famous definition of poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility", and calls his own poems in the book "experimental".

A fourth and final edition of Lyrical Ballads was published in He attempted to get the play staged in November However, it was rejected by Thomas Harristhe manager of the Covent Garden Theatrewho proclaimed it "impossible that the play should succeed in the representation". The rebuff was not received lightly by Wordsworth, and the play was not published untilafter substantial revisions.

I travelled among unknown men I travelled among unknown men, In lands beyond the sea; Nor, England! Nor will I quit thy shore A second time, for still I seem To love thee more and more. Thy mornings showed, thy nights concealed, The bowers where Lucy played; And thine too is the last green field That Lucy's eyes surveyed. Wordsworth, Dorothy, and Coleridge travelled to Germany in the autumn of While Coleridge was intellectually stimulated by the journey, its main effect on Wordsworth was to produce homesickness.

He wrote several other famous poems in Goslar, including " The Lucy poems ". In the Autumn ofWordsworth and his sister returned to England and visited the Hutchinson family at Sockburn.

William wordworth biography

When Coleridge arrived back in England, he travelled to the North with their publisher, Joseph Cottle, to meet Wordsworth and undertake a proposed tour of the Lake District. This was the immediate cause of the william wordworth biography and sister's settling at Dove Cottage in Grasmere in the Lake District, this time with another poet, Robert Southeynearby.

Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey came to be known as the " Lake Poets ". The following year, Mary gave birth to the first of five children, three of whom predeceased her and William:. Wordsworth had for years been making plans to write a long philosophical poem in three parts, which he intended to call The Recluse. Inhe began expanding this autobiographical work, having decided to make it a prologue rather than an appendix.

The death of his brother John, also inaffected him strongly and may have influenced his decisions about these works. Wordsworth's philosophical allegiances, as articulated in The Prelude and in such shorter works as " Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey " have been a source of critical debate. It was long supposed that Wordsworth relied chiefly on Coleridge for philosophical guidance.

However, scholars have recently suggested that Wordsworth's ideas may have been formed years before he and Coleridge became friends in the mids. In particular, while he was in revolutionary Paris inthe year-old Wordsworth met the mysterious traveller John "Walking" Stewart —[ 28 ] who was nearing the end of his thirty years of wandering, on foot, from MadrasIndia, through Persia and Arabiaacross Africa and Europe, and up through the fledgling United States.

By the time of their association, Stewart had published an ambitious work of original materialist philosophy entitled The Apocalypse of Nature London,to which many of Wordsworth's philosophical sentiments may well be indebted. Until now, Wordsworth was known only for Lyrical Balladsand he hoped this new collection would cement his reputation.

Its reception was lukewarm. InWordsworth and Coleridge were estranged over the latter's opium addiction, [ 8 ] and inhis son Thomas died at the age of 6, six months after the death of 3-year-old Catherine. Inhe and his family, including Dorothy, moved to Rydal MountAmbleside between Grasmere and Rydal Waterwhere he spent the rest of his life.

InWordsworth published The Excursion as the second part of the three-part work The Recluse even though he never completed the first or third parts. He did, however, write a poetic Prospectus to The Recluse in which he laid out the structure and intention of the whole work. The Prospectus contains some of Wordsworth's most famous lines on the relation between the human mind and nature:.

Some modern critics [ 30 ] suggest that there was a decline in his work beginning around the mids, perhaps because most of the concerns that characterised his early poems loss, death, endurance, separation and abandonment had been resolved in his writings and his life. The poet and artist William Blake, who knew Wordsworth's work, was struck by Wordsworth's boldness in centring his poetry on the william wordworth biography mind.

Following the death of his friend, the painter William Green inWordsworth also mended his relations with Coleridge. Coleridge and Charles Lamb both died intheir loss being a difficult blow to Wordsworth. The following year saw the passing of James Hogg. Despite the death of many contemporaries, the popularity of his poetry ensured a steady stream of young friends and admirers to replace those he lost.

Wordsworth's youthful political radicalism, unlike Coleridge's, never led him to rebel against his religious upbringing. He remarked in that he was willing to shed his blood for the established Church of Englandreflected in his Ecclesiastical Sketches of This religious conservatism also colours The Excursiona long poem that became extremely popular during the nineteenth century.

It features three central characters: the Wanderer, the Solitary, who has experienced the hopes and miseries of the French Revolutionand the Pastor, who dominates the last third of the poem. Behler [ 35 ] has pointed out the fact that Wordsworth wanted to invoke the basic feeling that a human heart possesses and expresses. He had reversed the philosophical standpoint expressed by his friend S.

Coleridgeof 'creating the characters in such an environment so that the public feels them belonging to the distant place and time'. And this philosophical realisation by Wordsworth indeed allowed him to choose the language and structural patterning of the poetry that a common person used every day. William Wordsworth has used conversation in his poetry to let the poet 'I' merge into 'We'.

The poem "Farewell" exposes the identical emotion that the poet and his sister nourish:. This kind of conversational tone persists throughout the poet's poetic journey, which positions him as a man in society who speaks to the purpose of communion with the very common mass of that society. Wordsworth remained a formidable presence in his later years.

He remained at Penrith where his initial education was based on tradition and religion. Dorothy Wordsworth. To complete his schooling he was sent to Hawkshead Grammar School which had a much stronger emphasis on scholarly pursuits and was a stepping stone to higher education. With the assistance of his schoolmaster he was also encouraged to write poetry, an important influence for this talented young boy.

Whilst at Hawkshead he boarded with Hugh and Ann Tyson at a local hamlet. It was whilst staying in this community with its strong Quaker tradition that he began to formulate his own opinions on matters pertaining to religion, society and nature. He had already become strongly influenced by his natural surroundings whilst staying at Penrith, choosing to wander away from his sad and stifling family life and embracing the natural world instead.

However it had an important effect on challenging his ideas and evolving attitudes to life. In his final summer as a Cambridge student, he decided to tour the Alps with his friend Robert Jones. It sought to depict the beauty of nature and the quintessential depth of human emotion. In the preface to Lyrical BallardsWordsworth writes of poetry:.

Inafter returning from a brief visit to see his daughter, Wordsworth married a childhood friend, Mary Hutchinson. Dorothy continued to live with the couple, and she became close to Mary as well as her brother. William and Mary had five children, though three died early. Inhe family also moved into Rydal Mount, Grasmere; a picturesque location, which inspired his later poetry.

By the s, the critical acclaim for Wordsworth was growing, though ironically critics note that, from this period, his poetry began losing some of its vigour and emotional intensity. His poetry was perhaps a william wordworth biography of his own ideas. The s had been a period of emotional turmoil and faith in the revolutionary ideal. Towards the end of his life, his disillusionment with the French Revolution had made him more conservative in outlook.

The poems were greeted with hostility by most critics. Coleridge lived nearby with his family. InWordsworth married a childhood friend, Mary Hutchinson. The next few years were personally difficult for Wordsworth. Two of his children died, his brother was drowned at sea and Dorothy suffered a mental breakdown. His political views underwent a transformation around the turn of the century, and he became increasingly conservative, disillusioned by events in France culminating in Napoleon Bonaparte taking power.

InWordsworth moved from Grasmere to nearby Ambelside. He continued to write poetry, but it was never as great as his early works.