INTRODUCTION TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

Born 1770, Died 1850 Considered to be one of the most important of the Romantic Poets. Credited with starting the Romantic movement in poetry.

Romantic Poetry Poets such as William Wordsworth were actively engaged in trying to create a new kind of poetry that emphasized intuition over reason and the pastoral over the urban, often eschewing consciously poetic language in an effort to use more colloquial language. Wordsworth himself in the Preface to his and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads defined good poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.”William WordsworthpastoralurbanLyrical Ballads

Wordsworth lost both parents at a young age and developed a very strong attachment to his sister, Dorothy. He loved nature as a boy and was particularly drawn to the countryside of the Lake District. He spent a great deal of his time playing outdoors, forming what he would later remember as a pure communion with nature.

In the winter of 1791, Wordsworth visited France and entered into a relationship with a Frenchwoman named Annette Vallon. Political unrest in France and lack of funds forced him to return to England, despite the fact that she had given birth to his daughter, Caroline.

Wordsworth spoke of the need to produce a type of poetry that embodied the ‘spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings from emotions recollected in tranquillity’. Breaking from his contemporaries, he attempted to accommodate the diction, rhythms and cadence of ordinary speech within the framework of his poetry.

For the first time since Chaucer, an English poet was writing about the lives of ordinary people and places. Wordsworth not only depicted the simple lives of ordinary country folk, but he also attempted to give a voice to the socially deprived.

Wordsworth married Mary Hutchinson in His sister, Dorothy, continued to live with the couple. Wordsworth attained almost a mythical status as a poet, during his lifetime.