(1770 - 1850)
Portrait of William Wordsworth by Benjamin Robert Haydon
1770 : Birth and parents
William Wordsworth was born at Cockermouth in
Cumberland, son of John Wordsworth, and Ann, née Cookson, of Penrith.The
Cooksons were well-to-do people who ran a large drapery next to the George Hotel
in Penrith. Ann's mother had aristocratic pretensions as a descendant of the
Crackenthorpes of Newbiggin Hall. John worked as an
agent and rent collector for
Sir
James
Lowther.
1778 - 1787: Childhood and
education
His mother died in 1778 (8), and in the same year he was sent as a
boarder to
Hawkshead
Grammar School. His father died in 1783
(13), at which time Sir James owed him some £4000 (around £200,000 in today's
terms), but he refused to honour the debt, which was not paid until 'wicked
Jimmy' (Sir James Lowther) was dead (ie 20 years later). Responsibility for
William and his siblings passed to his mother’s brother, Christopher Cookson, an
unhappy arrangement for the children, who found their guardian unsympathetic.
Hawkshead School, on the other hand, under the headship of William Taylor, was a
progressive and liberally oriented establishment, where reading in mathematics, the sciences
and poetry was encouraged. Wordsworth's sister, Dorothy, who was later to
become his constant companion, was separated from her brothers and sent to live
with Elizabeth 'Aunt' Threlkeld, her mother's cousin, in Halifax.
more
1787 - 90:
University and walking tour of
France, Switzerland, Northern Italy and Germany
He attended
St
John’s College, Cambridge, from 1787 (17)
to 1791 (21). During the long vacation of 1790 (20), he went on a walking tour of France, Switzerland,
Northern Italy and Germany (over 4000 kilometres in total) with his friend
Robert
Jones, at a time when the whole of France was in full
enthusiasm in the initial phases of the Revolution. They
returned along the Rhine, and by mid October, Wordsworth was back at Cambridge.
more
November 1791 - December 1792: Second visit to France and affair with Annette Vallon
During this second
visit to France he was befriended by
Michel
Beaupuy, through whom he came to share the ideals of the French Revolution,
despite its descent into violence and disorder.
Whilst in Orléans he had an affair with
Annette
Vallon (1766-), who bore him a child
(christened Caroline on December 15, 1792) just after he returned to England. He
would not see the child until 1802.
more
December 1792 - April 1793: He returns to England and radical ideas
Financial problems and the political situation in
France forced him to return to England. Whether he had requested money from his
uncles is uncertain, but he clearly had plans on foot to try to raise money by
the publication of the long poems
An Evening Walk and
Descriptive Sketches,
both completed while he was abroad. The two poems were published under separate
cover by Joseph Johnson of St
Paul's Churchyard, London, on
29 January 1793, receiving unfavourable not to say contemptuous reviews. He now began to give wholehearted support to
the radical philosophy of
Thomas
Paine and the ideas of the French
revolution, openly expressing these ideas in his own poetry,
and penning a Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff (probably composed in
February 1793, but unfinished and not
published until 1876) in which he clearly
expressed his republican sentiments, a dangerous thing at the time, as William
Pitt's
government was pursuing radicals and dissenters with increasingly severe
penalties.
more
map of England showing Wordsworth's tour of 1793
April 1793 - February 1794: Pedestrian tour of England and Wales, possible
third visit to France, William
Calvert, and Dorothy Wordsworth
With war between England and France declared in February 1793, return to
France became almost impossible. In April 1793 (23), William Calvert, a friend
from Hawkshead School, who had recently inherited a considerable fortune,
invited him on a tour of England and Wales, all expenses paid. The tour began on
the Isle of Wight (2), conceivably to allow William to check out the possibility
of making a crossing to France. The two men spent a month on the island before
heading north, separating near Salisbury (3) after an accident that damaged the gig in which they
were travelling beyond repair. It was probably at this point that Wordsworth
began to compose the poem Salisbury Plain. He continued alone and on foot
through Salisbury, Bath, Bristol and into Wales (4), following the River Wye past
Tintern Abbey, then continued his tour northwards,
visiting his friend Jones in the vale of Clwyd (5), where he spent the summer.
It is possible that he now made another attempt to cross over to France (6), the
main evidence for which is that the historian Carlyle recorded later that
William told him that he had witnessed the execution of Gorsas, which occurred
in Paris on October 7, 1793. He probably returned to England shortly thereafter
and made his way north to visit relatives and friends in the Lake District (7) during the
late autumn and winter,
arriving at the
Rawson's house near Halifax (8) in
mid-February 1794 (24), where he was re-united with his sister, Dorothy.
February - September 1794 : tour of the North West with Dorothy
He
stayed in Halifax with his sister, Dorothy, and the Rawsons until mid-April
1794. They then set off together, travelling
by coach and on foot as far as
Windy Brow, near Keswick (9), a farmhouse offered to them rent free by William
Calvert while he was away in London, and where they lingered for a while until
making for Cockermouth and then Whitehaven, where Dorothy stayed with the family
of her uncle Richard Wordsworth. The two then
spent some time moving between friends and relations in the Lake District.
September 1794 - January 1795: Raisley Calvert and a legacy
William returned to Windy Brow in late September, where he found William
Calvert's brother, Raisley,
in poor health (he was in fact dying of tuberculosis). The poet agreed to accompany
the sick man on a trip to Portugal, but, when
this proved impossible due to his deteriorating health, undertook to
stay to look after him. Raisley, who had made plans to share his income with
Wordsworth in order to allow him to pursue his career as poet, now proposed to
leave him £600, later raised to £900, as a legacy. Wordsworth spent the next few
months nursing him until his death on January 9, 1795 (25).
more
February 1795 - September 1795: Residence in London and Bristol
At the end of February 1795 (25), Wordsworth was back in London, and became involved with the
radical republican circle around the philosopher William
Godwin. Amongst those he met at this
time were John
and Azariah Pinney, sons of a
rich Bristol merchant, who offered
him the use of Racedown Lodge in Dorset rent free. He also came to an agreement with Basil
Montagu to look after
Montagu's
young son for £50 a year, the intention being to settle with Dorothy and the boy
at Racedown. He left London towards the end of August 1795 for Bristol, where
Robert Southey and Samuel
Taylor Coleridge had been
giving lectures. After spending five weeks with the Pinneys, he arrived at Racedown with his sister
Dorothy and the young Basil on 26 September. more
map of Great Britain showing places relevant to the
biography of Wordsworth
September 1795 - June 1797: Racedown Lodge
Whilst the crackdown against radicals continued with the passage of the
Treasonable Practices and Seditious Meetings
Acts
in December 1795, Wordsworth lived in solitude with his sister and young Basil
Montagu at Racedown. He
revised the poem
Salisbury Plain, writing to his friend Francis Wrangham on November
20, 1795: 'I have made alterations and additions so material as that it may be
looked on almost as another work'. A visit to London in June 1796 and further
acquaintance with Godwin and his circle seems to have confirmed a reaction
against the philosopher's ideas, which William expressed in his blank verse
drama The Borderers,
composed in late 1796 / early 1797. His future wife, Mary Hutchinson, arrived to
visit in November 1796, staying until the end of May 1797. Returning on foot
from a trip to Bristol in early April 1797, Wordsworth
made a detour to pay a visit to
the poet
Coleridge
at Nether Stowey, and Coleridge
returned the compliment a little later, arriving at Racedown on 5 June, at which
point
Coleridge read aloud his unfinished drama Osorio and Wordsworth read
aloud his Borderers. Coleridge left on June 28, but
returned two days
later in a cart to carry off William and Dorothy to Nether Stowey.
more
Map of the West Country
July 1797 - July 1798: Alfoxton House and
Lyrical Ballads
Whilst visiting Coleridge at Nether Stowey, the Wordsworths found and took a lease on nearby
Alfoxton House, 'a large mansion, in a large park, with seventy head of deer
around us' (Dorothy Wordsworth to Mary Hutchinson, August 14, 1797).
Unfortunately, rumours spread that the Wordsworths were republican sympathisers
and possibly French spies. It was a time of heightened fear of a French
invasion, and a government agent was sent to check out the rumours, which were
found to be groundless, but Mrs St Albyn, the owner of the Alfoxton property,
promptly gave them notice to quit at the end of June 1798. By the beginning of
March 1798, Wordsworth had completed the first version of The Ruined
Cottage, according to Dorothy 'to the length of 900 lines' (Letter to Mary
Hutchinson March 5, 1798). The poem was never published in this form,
but much of the material was used later for the first book of
The Excursion. It was also during the course of
early 1798 that the idea of composing an epic philosophic poem was suggested by
Coleridge. Wordsworth took on the idea. He writes in a letter to Jas Tobin, on 6
March, 1798 : 'I have written 1300 lines of a poem in which I contrive to convey
most of the knowledge of which I am possessed. My object is to give pictures of
Nature, Man and Society. Indeed, I know not any thing which will not come within
the scope of my plan.' The poem was The Recluse,
which, including the preface The Prelude, eventually expanded to some twenty thousand lines and on which Wordsworth was to work
for the rest of his life. Wordsworth also planned a collaboration with Coleridge
to bring to publication a volume of poetry, entitled
Lyrical Ballads, for
which most of the poems were written between April and August 1798. The volume
was published in September 1798. more
map of northern Germany showing places visited by
Wordsworth and Coleridge
September 1798 - May 1799: Trip to Germany
On 16 September William and Dorothy Wordsworth set
sail from Yarmouth for Hamburg with Coleridge and John Chester, a native of
Nether Stowey. Having seen the sights of Hamburg all
'huddle and ugliness, stink and stagnation,' (Coleridge, letter to Thomas
Poole, 26 October), Coleridge left for Ratzeburg, arranging for rooms for himself and Chester. The
Wordsworths were left to make their own arrangements, and travelled south to
Goslar, 'a venerable (venerable I mean as to its external appearance)
decayed city'. Wordsworth made no progress in learning
German as there was almost no-one with whom he could converse, and he and
Dorothy lived in almost complete isolation, an isolation which had its benefits
as the poet was thrown back on his own resources, and composed a considerable
amount of poetry, including the 'Lucy' and 'Matthew' poems, and the beginnings
of The Prelude. They were
effectively kept at Goslar by the exceptionally cold winter, leaving only on 23
February to tour the Harz mountains and probably some of the towns of Upper
Saxony, including Weimar. Unfortunately, Wordsworth's account of this tour has
been lost. Coleridge had in the meantime moved to Göttingen, where the
Wordsworths arrived in April burning with '.. impatience to return to their
native country' (Coleridge, letter to Sara Coleridge, 23 April) Unable to persuade Coleridge to go with them,
they promptly left for England the next day. more
May - December 1799 : Return to England,
Sockburn and the Lake District
On their return in May 1799 (29), William and
Dorothy moved first to
Sockburn, Yorkshire, where they stayed with their friends, the Hutchinsons.
Coleridge returned from Germany in July and came to visit at the end of October
with the publisher Cottle. The three men set out on a walking tour to Egglestone
Abbey, Barnard Castle, and Greta Bridge, where Cottle parted company, and the
two poets took the mail to Temple Sowerby near Penrith. William's brother John
now joined them, and the three men set off on a tour of the Lakes, during which
William discovered a 'small house' at Grasmere which he thinks he and Dorothy
might take. This is
Town End (later called Dove Cottage), Grasmere. The two poets parted company
around November 17, Coleridge returning to Sockburn and then, almost
immediately, to London, William staying on in the Lakes until the end of
November, and probably completing arrangements for renting Dove Cottage. It is
probably at this point in time that Coleridge's infatuation with Sarah
Hutchinson, Mary's sister, began.
more
Dove Cottage, Grasmere, now the Wordsworth Museum. It was
known to the Wordsworths as Townend. Built in the 17th century as the
Dove and
Olive Bough Inn, the cottage was rented by the Wordsworths from
December 1799 until May 1808.
Ullswater in the Lake District, watercolour by John
Glover (1767-1849)
Links to Poems
Poems written in youth
Lines left on a Seat in a Yew Tree
Descriptive Sketches
An Evening Walk
Poems on the naming of places
Joanna's Rock
Poems of the Fancy
The Linnet
Poems of the Imagination
Lines written above Tintern Abbey
Night Piece
Miscellaneous Sonnets
Upon Westminster Bridge
It is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free
Composed in the Valley near Dover
The Poet's Work
Sonnet, on seeing Miss Helen Maria Williams weep at a tale of distress
The World is too much with us
Poems dedicated to National
Independence and Liberty
On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic
Other Poems
The Prelude
Links to external sites
Recording of The Wanderer
Comprehensive poetry resource
The poet
biographies, criticism, maps, translations, and textual notes on this site are
the copyright of Paul Scott
www.adnax.com