William Wordsworth

As a student, he toured France and fell in love with a French Woman, Annette Vallon with whom he had a daughter, Caroline. Even though he did not marry Annette, he did his best to support his daughter.

In 1802, he married his childhood friend Mary Hutchinson. The couple had five children, three of whom predeceased their father. His sister Dorothy lived with him throughout his life.

After the death of his daughter Dora in 1847, the devastated father stopped writing poetry completely.

William Wordsworth was the second of the five children born to John Wordsworth and Ann Cookson. John Wordsworth was a legal agent for James Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale while Ann Cookson was the daughter of a linen-draper.

He had three brothers (Richard, John and Christopher) and one sister, Dorothy. He was the closest to his sister with whom he shared an intense and lifelong friendship.

As a child, he attended the grammar school near Cockermouth Church and Ann Birkett's school at Penrith.

After the death of his mother in 1778, he was sent to Hawkshead Grammar School in Lancashire. His father died in 1783.

The untimely deaths of both his parents meant that he was separated from his beloved sister who was sent away to live with relatives.

It was during his stint at Hawkshead Grammar School that young William realized his firm love for poetry. The publication of a sonnet in The European Magazine in 1787 launched his career as a poet.

While studying at St.John’s college in Cambridge, he set out to tour Europe. This experience deeply impacted his interests and sympathies in life, sensitized him to the troubles of the common man, and had an intense influence on his poetry.

He published his poetry collections, ‘An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches’ in 1793, further cementing his career.

He met the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1795. It was in collaboration with him that the most significant work in the English Romantic Movement, ‘Lyrical Ballads’ was produced in 1798.

At the peak of his career, he published ‘Poems, in Two Volumes’, in 1807.

‘Lyrical Ballads’, published with Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1798 remains one of his major works till date. The poems in themselves are some of the most influential in Western literature, but the poet’s views as expressed in the preface to the second edition hold the honour of being the most important work of the English Romantic Movement.

‘The Prelude’, had not even been given a title at the time of Wordsworth’s death; it was the product of a lifetime he had been working on from the time he was 28. It was ultimately named and published by his widow Mary three months after his death.