William Wordsworth#Musical settings

{{Main|Early life of William Wordsworth}}

The second of five children born to John Wordsworth and Ann Cookson, William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 in what is now named Wordsworth House in Cockermouth, Cumberland (now in Cumbria),{{NHLE |num=1327088 |desc=Wordsworth House |access-date=21 December 2009}} part of the scenic region in northwestern England known as the Lake District. William's sister, the poet and diarist Dorothy Wordsworth, to whom he was close all his life, was born the following year, and the two were baptised together. They had three other siblings: Richard, the eldest, who became a lawyer; John Wordsworth, born after Dorothy, who went to sea and died in 1805 when the ship of which he was captain, the Earl of Abergavenny, was wrecked off the south coast of England; and Christopher, the youngest, who entered the Church and rose to be Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.{{cite book|section=Appendix A (Past Governors)|last1=Allport|first1=Denison Howard|first2=Norman J.|last2=Friskney|title=A Short History of Wilson's School|publisher=Wilson's School Charitable Trust|year=1986|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iyQxGwAACAAJ}}

Wordsworth's father was a legal representative of James Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale and, through his connections, lived in a large mansion in the small town. He was frequently away from home on business, so the young William and his siblings had little involvement with him and remained distant until he died in 1783.Moorman 1968 pp. 5–7. However, he did encourage William in his reading, and in particular, set him to commit large portions of verse to memory, including works by Milton, Shakespeare and Spenser which William would pore over in his father's library. William also spent time at his mother's parents' house in Penrith, Cumberland, where he was exposed to the moors but did not get along with his grandparents or uncle, who also lived there. His hostile interactions with them distressed him to the point of contemplating suicide.Moorman 1968:9–13.

Wordsworth was taught to read by his mother, and he first attended a tiny school of low quality in Cockermouth, then a school in Penrith for the children of upper-class families. He was taught there by Ann Birkett, who instilled in her students traditions that included pursuing scholarly and local activities, especially the festivals around Easter, May Day and Shrove Tuesday. Wordsworth was taught both the Bible and the Spectator, but little else. At the school in Penrith, he met the Hutchinsons, including Mary Hutchinson, who later became his wife.Moorman 1968:15–18.

After the death of Wordsworth's mother, in 1778, his father sent him to Hawkshead Grammar School in Lancashire (now in Cumbria) and sent Dorothy to live with relatives in Yorkshire. She and William did not meet again for nine years.

Wordsworth debuted as a writer in 1787 when he published a sonnet in The European Magazine. That same year he began attending St John's College, Cambridge. He received his BA degree in 1791.{{acad|id=WRDT787W|name=Wordsworth, William}} He returned to Hawkshead for the first two summers of his time at Cambridge and often spent later holidays on walking tours, visiting places famous for the beauty of their landscape. In 1790, he went on a walking tour of Europe, during which he toured the Alps extensively and visited nearby areas of France, Switzerland, and Italy.{{cite book|author=Andrew Bennett|title=William Wordsworth in Context|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XPtDBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA191|date=12 February 2015|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-1-107-02841-8|page=191}}

In November 1791, Wordsworth visited Revolutionary France and became enchanted with the Republican movement. He fell in love with a French woman, Annette Vallon, who, in 1792, gave birth to their daughter Caroline. Financial problems and Britain's tense relations with France forced him to return to England alone the following year.Everett, Glenn, [http://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/ww/bio.html "William Wordsworth: Biography"] at The Victorian Web, accessed 7 January 2007. The circumstances of his return and subsequent behaviour raised doubts about his declared wish to marry Annette. However, he supported her and his daughter as best he could in later life. The Reign of Terror left Wordsworth thoroughly disillusioned with the French Revolution, and the outbreak of armed hostilities between Britain and France prevented him from seeing Annette and his daughter for some years.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}}

With the Peace of Amiens again allowing travel to France, in 1802, Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy visited Annette and Caroline in Calais. The purpose of the visit was to prepare Annette for the fact of his forthcoming marriage to Mary Hutchinson. Afterwards, he wrote the sonnet "It is a beauteous evening, calm and free", recalling a seaside walk with the nine-year-old Caroline, whom he had never seen before that visit. Mary was anxious that Wordsworth should do more for Caroline. Upon Caroline's marriage, in 1816, Wordsworth settled £30 a year on her (equivalent to £{{Formatnum:{{inflation|UK|30|1816|2021|r=-2}}}} in 2021), payments which continued until 1835, when they were replaced by a capital settlement.Gill (1989) Pp. 208, 299{{cite web|title=Purchasing Power of British Pounds from 1245 to Present|url=http://www.measuringworth.com/calculators/ppoweruk/|publisher=MeasuringWorth.com|access-date=28 May 2012}}

== Early career ==

===First publication and Lyrical Ballads===

{{Quote box |width=250px |align=left |quoted=true |bgcolor=#FFFFF0 |salign=right

|quote =

We Are Seven

I met a little cottage girl:

She was eight years old, she said;

Her hair was thick with many a curl

That clustered round her head.

She had a rustic, woodland air,

And she was wildly clad;

Her eyes were fair, and very fair; -

Her beauty made me glad.

“Sisters and brothers, little maid,

How many may you be?”

“How many? Seven in all,” she said,

And wondering looked at me.

“And where are they? I pray you tell.”

She answered, “Seven are we;

And two of us at Conway dwell,

And two are gone to sea;

“Two of us in the churchyard lie,

My sister and my brother;

And, in the churchyard cottage, I

Dwell near them with my mother.”

“My stockings there I often knit;

My kerchief there I hem;

And there upon the ground I sit,

And sing a song to them.

“And often after sunset, sir,

When it is light and fair,

I take my little porringer,

And eat my supper there.

“How many are you, then,” said I,

“If they two are in heaven?”

Quick was the little maid’s reply:

“O Master! we are seven.”

“But they are dead; those two are dead!

Their spirits are in heaven!” -

’T was throwing words away; for still

The little maid would have her will,

And said, “Nay, we are seven!”|source =From the "We Are Seven" poem[https://books.google.com/books?id=kXd4bRr71a4C&dq=A+Library+of+Poetry+and+Song%3A+Being+Choice+Selections+from+the+Best+Poets+William+Wordsworth+england&pg=PA14 A Library of Poetry and Song: Being Choice Selections from The Best Poets. With An Introduction by William Cullen Bryant], New York, J.B. Ford and Company, 1871, pp. 14-15.}}

File:William Wordsworth at 28 by William Shuter2.jpg."[http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/collections/wordsworth.html The Cornell Wordsworth Collection]". Cornell University. Retrieved 13 February 2009.]] The year 1793 saw the first publication of poems by Wordsworth in the collections An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches. In 1795, he received a legacy of £900 from Raisley Calvert and was able to pursue a career as a poet.

It was also in 1795 that he met Samuel Taylor Coleridge in Somerset. The two poets quickly developed a close friendship. For two years from 1795, William and his sister Dorothy lived at Racedown House in Dorset—a property of the Pinney family—to the west of Pilsdon Pen. 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,

"We have hills which, seen from a distance, almost take the character of mountains, some cultivated nearly to their summits, others in their wild state covered with furze and broom. These delight me the most as they remind me of our native wilds."{{cite book|title=Dorset Villages|author=Roland Gant|publisher=Robert Hale Ltd|pages=111–112|year=1980|isbn=0-7091-8135-3}}

In 1797, the pair moved to Alfoxton House, Somerset, just a few miles away from Coleridge's home in Nether Stowey. Together Wordsworth and Coleridge (with insights from Dorothy) produced Lyrical Ballads (1798), an important work in the English Romantic movement.{{Cite book |year=1798 |title=Lyricall Ballads: With a Few Other Poems |edition=1 |publisher= J. & A. Arch |publication-date=1798 |location=London |url= https://archive.org/details/lyricalballadswi00word |access-date=13 November 2014 }} via archive.org The volume gave neither Wordsworth's nor Coleridge's name as author. 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 in 1800, had only Wordsworth listed as the author and included a preface to the poems.{{Cite book |last=Wordsworth |first= William |year=1800 |title=Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems |edition=2 |publisher= Printed for T.N. Longman and O. Rees |publication-date=1800 |location=London |volume= I |url=https://archive.org/details/lyricalballadswi04word |access-date=13 November 2014 }}; {{Cite book |last=Wordsworth |first= William |year=1800 |title=Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems |edition=2 |publisher= Printed for T.N. Longman and O. Rees |publication-date=1800 |location=London |volume= II |url=https://archive.org/details/lyricalballadswi03word |access-date=13 November 2014 }} via archive.org It was augmented significantly in the next edition, published in 1802.{{Cite book |last=Wordsworth |first= William |year=1802 |title=Lyrical Ballads with Pastoral and other Poems |edition=3 |publisher= Printed for T.N. Longman and O. Rees |publication-date=1802 |location=London |volume= I |url=https://archive.org/details/lyricalballadsw01colegoog |access-date=13 November 2014 }} via archive.org. In this preface, which some scholars consider a central work of Romantic literary theory, Wordsworth discusses what he sees as the elements of a new type of verse, one that is based on the ordinary language "really used by men" while avoiding the poetic diction of much 18th-century verse. 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 1805.{{Cite book |last=Wordsworth |first= William |year=1805 |title=Lyrical Ballads with Pastoral and other Poems |edition=4 |publisher=Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, by R. Taylor |publication-date=1805 |location=London |volume= I |url=https://archive.org/details/lyricalballadsi00neilgoog |access-date=13 November 2014 }} via archive.org.

Between 1795 and 1797, Wordsworth wrote his only play, The Borderers, a verse tragedy set during the reign of King Henry III of England, when Englishmen in the North Country came into conflict with Scottish border reivers. He attempted to get the play staged in November 1797. However, it was rejected by Thomas Harris, the manager of the Covent Garden Theatre, who 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 until 1842, after substantial revisions.Stephen Gill, William Wordsworth: A Life, Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 132–133.

{{Quote box |width=280px |align=right |quoted=true |bgcolor=#FFFFF0 |salign=right

|quote =

I travelled among unknown men

I travelled among unknown men,

In lands beyond the sea;

Nor, England! did I know till then

What love I bore to thee.

'T is past, that melancholy dream!

Nor will I quit thy shore

A second time, for still I seem

To love thee more and more.

Among thy mountains did I feel

The joy of my desire;

And she I cherished turned her wheel

Beside an English fire.

Thy mornings showed, thy nights concealed,

The bowers where Lucy played;

And thine too is the last green field

That Lucy's eyes surveyed.|source =[https://books.google.com/books?id=kXd4bRr71a4C&dq=A+Library+of+Poetry+and+Song%3A+Being+Choice+Selections+from+the+Best+Poets+William+Wordsworth+england&pg=PA442 A Library of Poetry and Song: Being Choice Selections from The Best Poets. With An Introduction by William Cullen Bryant], New York, J.B. Ford and Company, 1871, p. 442.}}

Wordsworth, Dorothy, and Coleridge travelled to Germany in the autumn of 1798. While Coleridge was intellectually stimulated by the journey, its main effect on Wordsworth was to produce homesickness. During the harsh winter of 1798–99, Wordsworth lived with Dorothy in Goslar, and, despite extreme stress and loneliness, began work on the autobiographical piece that was later titled The Prelude. He wrote several other famous poems in Goslar, including "The Lucy poems". In the Autumn of 1799, Wordsworth and his sister returned to England and visited the Hutchinson family at Sockburn. 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 brother and sister's settling at Dove Cottage in Grasmere in the Lake District, this time with another poet, Robert Southey, nearby. Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey came to be known as the "Lake Poets".Recollections of the Lake Poets. Throughout this period, many of Wordsworth's poems revolved around themes of death, endurance, separation and grief.

File:Dove Cottage - geograph.org.uk - 70618.jpg (Town End, Grasmere) – home of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, 1799–1808; home of Thomas De Quincey, 1809–1820]]

In 1802, Lowther's heir, William Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale, paid the £4,000 ({{Inflation|UK|4000|1802|fmt=eq|cursign=£}}) owed to Wordsworth's father through Lowther's failure to pay his aide.Moorman 1968 p. 8 It was this repayment that afforded Wordsworth the financial means to marry. On 4 October, following his visit with Dorothy to France to arrange matters with Annette, Wordsworth married his childhood friend, Mary Hutchinson, at All Saints' Church, Brompton. Dorothy continued to live with the couple and grew close to Mary. The following year, Mary gave birth to the first of five children, three of whom predeceased her and William:

• Rev. John Wordsworth MA (18 June 1803{{snd}}25 July 1875). Vicar of Brigham, Cumberland and Rector of Plumbland, Cumberland. Buried at Highgate Cemetery (west side). Married four times:{{cite journal |last1=Ward |first1=John Powell |title=Wordsworth's Eldest Son: John Wordsworth and the Intimations Ode |url=https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/TWC24045111?journalCode=twc |journal=The Wordsworth Circle |access-date=14 September 2021 |pages=66–80 |doi=10.1086/TWC24045111 |date=1 March 2005|volume=36 |issue=2 |s2cid=159651742 |url-access=subscription }}
• # Isabella Curwen (died 1848) had six children: Jane Stanley, Henry, William, John, Charles and Edward.
• ## Jane Stanley (1833–1912), who married the Rev. Bennet Sherard Kennedy (an illegitimate son of Robert Sherard, 6th Earl of Harborough) and their son Robert Harborough Sherard became first biographer to his friend, Oscar Wilde.{{cite book |last1=Hanberry |first1=Gerard |title=More Lives Than One |date=29 September 2011 |publisher=Gill & Macmillan Ltd |isbn=978-1-84889-943-8 |page=29 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1QiWDwAAQBAJ |access-date=14 September 2021 |language=en}}
• # Helen Ross (died 1854). No children.
• # Mary Ann Dolan (died after 1858) had one daughter Dora.
• ## Dora Wordsworth (1858–1934){{cite web |title=Wordsworth mss. II, 1848–1909 |url=https://archives.iu.edu/catalog/InU-Li-VAD0997 |website=archives.iu.edu |publisher=Archives Online at Indiana University |access-date=14 September 2021}}
• # Mary Gamble. No children.
• Dora Wordsworth (16 August 1804{{snd}}9 July 1847). Married Edward Quillinan in 1841.
• Thomas Wordsworth (15 June 1806{{snd}}1 December 1812).
• Catherine Wordsworth (6 September 1808{{snd}}4 June 1812).
• William "Willy" Wordsworth (12 May 1810{{snd}}1883). He married Fanny Graham and had four children: Mary Louisa, William, Reginald, and Gordon.

Wordsworth had for years been making plans to write a long philosophical poem in three parts, which he intended to call The Recluse.{{Cite web |title=William Wordsworth {{!}} The Asian Age Online, Bangladesh |url=http://dailyasianage.com/news/118185/?regenerate |access-date=2022-06-23 |website=The Asian Age |language=en}} In 1798–99 he started an autobiographical poem, which he referred to as the "poem to Coleridge" and which he planned would serve as an appendix to a larger work called The Recluse. In 1804, he began expanding this autobiographical work, having decided to make it a prologue rather than an appendix.{{Cite web |date=2021-11-18 |title=William Wordsworth – English History |url=https://englishhistory.net/poets/william-wordsworth/ |access-date=2022-06-23 |language=en-US}} He completed this work, now generally referred to as the first version of The Prelude, in 1805, but refused to publish such a personal work until he had completed the whole of The Recluse. The death of his brother John, also in 1805, affected him strongly and may have influenced his decisions about these works.{{Cite journal |last1=O' |first1=John |last2=Meara |date=2011-01-01 |title=This Life, This Death: Wordsworth's Poetic Destiny |url=https://www.academia.edu/38066667 |journal=IUniverse, Bloomington IN}}

File:Rydal Mount - geograph.org.uk - 959824.jpg – home to Wordsworth 1813–1850. Hundreds of visitors came here to see him over the years]]

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 mid-1790s. In particular, while he was in revolutionary Paris in 1792, the 22-year-old Wordsworth met the mysterious traveller John "Walking" Stewart (1747–1822),Kelly Grovier, "Dream Walker: A Wordsworth Mystery Solved", Times Literary Supplement, 16 February 2007 who was nearing the end of his thirty years of wandering, on foot, from Madras, India, through Persia and Arabia, across 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, 1791), to which many of Wordsworth's philosophical sentiments may well be indebted.

In 1807, Wordsworth published Poems, in Two Volumes, including "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood". Until now, Wordsworth was known only for Lyrical Ballads, and he hoped this new collection would cement his reputation. Its reception was lukewarm.

In 1810, Wordsworth and Coleridge were estranged over the latter's opium addiction, and in 1812, his son Thomas died at the age of 6, six months after the death of 3-year-old Catherine. The following year, he received an appointment as Distributor of Stamps for Westmorland, and the stipend of £400 a year made him financially secure, albeit at the cost of political independence. In 1813, he and his family, including Dorothy, moved to Rydal Mount, Ambleside (between Grasmere and Rydal Water), where he spent the rest of his life.

In 1814, Wordsworth 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:

{{blockquote|

... my voice proclaims

How exquisitely the individual Mind

(And the progressive powers perhaps no less

Of the whole species) to the external World

Is fitted:{{mdash}}and how exquisitely, too{{mdash}}

Theme this but little heard of among Men,

The external World is fitted to the Mind;

And the creation (by no lower name

Can it be called) which they with blended might

Accomplish ...{{cite book|title=Poetical Works|location=London|publisher=Oxford U.P.|date=1936|series=Oxford Standard Authors|page=590}}}}

Some modern critics{{Cite book|title = Wordsworth's Poetry, 1787–1814|last = Hartman|first = Geoffrey|publisher = Yale University Press|year = 1987|isbn = 9780674958210|location = New Haven|pages = 329–331}} suggest that there was a decline in his work beginning around the mid-1810s, 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.Already in 1891 James Kenneth Stephen wrote satirically of Wordsworth having "two voices": one is "of the deep", the other "of an old half-witted sheep/Which bleats articulate monotony" ("A Sonnet" ["Two voices are there"]). By 1820, he was enjoying considerable success accompanying a reversal in the contemporary critical opinion of his earlier works.

The poet and artist William Blake, who knew Wordsworth's work, was struck by Wordsworth's boldness in centring his poetry on the human mind. In response to Wordsworth's poetic programme that, “when we look / Into our Minds, into the Mind of Man- / My haunt, and the main region of my song” (The Excursion), William Blake wrote to his friend Henry Crabb Robinson that the passage " caused him a bowel complaint which nearly killed him”.{{cite book |last1=Abrams |first1=M.H. |title=Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature |date=1971 |publisher=Norton |page=24}}

Following the death of his friend, the painter William Green in 1823, Wordsworth also mended his relations with Coleridge.Sylvanus Urban, The Gentleman's Magazine, 1823 The two were fully reconciled by 1828 when they toured the Rhineland together. Dorothy suffered from a severe illness in 1829 and she remained ill for the remainder of her life. Coleridge and Charles Lamb both died in 1834, their 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 1812 that he was willing to shed his blood for the established Church of England, reflected in his Ecclesiastical Sketches of 1822. This religious conservatism also colours The Excursion (1814), a 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 Revolution, and the Pastor, who dominates the last third of the poem.{{cite web|url=http://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/ww/religion1.html|title=Wordsworth's Religion|website=www.victorianweb.org}}

Behler{{Cite journal |last=BEHLER |first=ERNST |title=The Origins of the Romantic Literary Theory |date=1968 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23979800 |journal=Colloquia Germanica |volume=2 |pages=109–126 |jstor=23979800 |issn=0010-1338}} 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. T. Coleridge, of '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.{{Cite journal |last=Doolittle |first=James |date=1969-12-01 |title=The Demonic Imagination: Style and Theme in French Romantic Poetry. |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/00267929-30-4-615 |journal=Modern Language Quarterly |volume=30 |issue=4 |pages=615–617 |doi=10.1215/00267929-30-4-615 |issn=0026-7929|url-access=subscription }} Kurland wrote that the conversational aspect of a language emerges through social necessity.{{Cite web |title=Dan Kurland's www.criticalreading.com -- Strategies for Critical Reading and Writing |url=http://www.criticalreading.com/ |access-date=2022-06-23 |website=www.criticalreading.com}} Social necessity posits the theme of possessing the proper knowledge, interest and biases also among the speakers. 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:

"We leave you here in solitude to dwell/ With these our latest gifts of tender thought;

Thou, like the morning, in thy saffron coat,/ Bright gowan, and marsh-marigold, farewell!" (L.19–22).

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.{{Cite journal |last=Ahmed |first=Sheikh Saifullah |date=2020-01-01 |title=The Sociolinguistic Perspectives of the Stylistic Liberation of Wordsworth |url=https://www.academia.edu/44328447 |journal=Sparkling International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research Studies}} Again; "Preface to Lyrical Ballads" is the evidence where the poet expresses why he is writing and what he is writing and what purpose it will serve humanity.

Wordsworth remained a formidable presence in his later years. In 1837, the Scottish poet and playwright Joanna Baillie reflected on her long acquaintance with Wordsworth. "He looks like a man that one must not speak to unless one has some sensible thing to say. However, he does occasionally converse cheerfully & well, and when one knows how benevolent & excellent he is, it disposes one to be very much pleased with him."{{cite book|last=Baillie|first=Joanna|editor=Thomas McLean|title=Further Letters of Joanna Baillie|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=17xLwZQppO4C&pg=PA22|year=2010|publisher=Fairleigh Dickinson University Press|location=Madison, NJ|isbn=978-0-8386-4149-1|page=181}}

In 1838, Wordsworth received an honorary doctorate in Civil Law from the University of Durham. The following year he was awarded the same honorary degree by the University of Oxford, when John Keble praised him as the "poet of humanity", praise greatly appreciated by Wordsworth.Gill, pp396-7 (It has been argued that Wordsworth was a significant influence on Keble's immensely popular book of devotional poetry, The Christian Year (1827).{{Cite web|url=http://www.victorianweb.org/religion/herb4.html#ww1|title=The Religious Influence of the Romantic Poets}}) In 1842, the government awarded him a Civil List pension of £300 a year.

Following the death of Robert Southey in 1843, Wordsworth became Poet Laureate. He initially refused the honour, saying that he was too old, but accepted when the Prime Minister, Robert Peel, assured him that "you shall have nothing required of you". Wordsworth thus became the only poet laureate to write no official verses. The sudden death of his daughter Dora in 1847 at age 42 was difficult for the ageing poet to take, and in his depression, he ultimately gave up writing new material.

File:WilliamWordsworth Grave.JPG, Cumbria]]

William Wordsworth died at home at Rydal Mount from an aggravated case of pleurisy on 23 April 1850,[http://www.royal.gov.uk/TheRoyalHousehold/OfficialRoyalposts/PoetLaureate.aspx "Poet Laureate"], The British Monarchy official website.Stephen Gill, William Wordsworth: A Life, Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 422–3. and was buried at St Oswald's Church, Grasmere. His widow, Mary, published his lengthy autobiographical "Poem to Coleridge" as The Prelude several months after his death.e g Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal 26 December 1801 Though it failed to interest people at the time, it has since come to be widely recognised as his masterpiece.{{cn|date=June 2023}}

• Dominick Argento set eight Wordsworth poems in his song cycle To be Sung Upon the Water (1973).[https://www.lieder.net/lieder/assemble_texts.html?SongCycleId=5468 To be Sung Upon the Water, Lieder.net]
• Arnold Bax set the poem "To the Cuckoo" in 1900 while a student.[https://www.lieder.net/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=9341 "Too the Cuckoo", Lieder.net]
• Richard Rodney Bennett set Intimations of Immortality for a cappella chorus and one instrument in 2000.[https://www.wisemusicclassical.com/work/12395/The-Glory-and-the-Dream--Richard-Rodney-Bennett/ The Glory and the Dream, Novello (2000)]
• Benjamin Britten set a passage from The Prelude (beginning "But that night, When on my bed I lay") in his song cycle Nocturne (1958).
• Alicia Van Buren (1860–1922) used the text of "Lines Written in Early Spring" for her song "In Early Spring".{{Cite web|title=Collection: Papers of Alicia Keisker Van Buren, 1889–1915 {{!}} HOLLIS for|url=https://hollisarchives.lib.harvard.edu/repositories/8/resources/5724/collection_organization|access-date=2021-04-18|website=hollisarchives.lib.harvard.edu}}
• Ronald Corp has set passages from The Prelude within his cantata Laudamus (1994) and various poems in his song cycles The Music of Wordsworth and Flower of Cities.
• George Dyson's Quo Vadis for chorus and orchestra, written between 1936 and 1945, includes a setting of "Our birth is but a sleep" (from Intimations of Immortality).[https://www.gramophone.co.uk/review/dyson-quo-vadis 'Dyson, Quo Vadis' in Gramophone, June 2003]
• Gerald Finzi set the ode Intimations of Immortality for tenor, chorus, and orchestra in 1950.{{Cite web|url=http://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/tw.asp?w=W4412|title=Intimations of Immortality, Op. 29|publisher=Hyperion Records}}
• Charles Ives set "I travelled among unknown men" in 1901. His work The Rainbow (1914) for chamber orchestra is described as "after the poem by William Wordsworth". He also set the text as a song.
• Frederick Kelly set "The daffodils" in 1913.[https://imslp.org/wiki/6_Songs%2C_Op.6_(Kelly%2C_Frederick_Septimus) '6 Songs, Op.6 (Kelly, Frederick Septimus)'], score at IMSLP
• Elisabeth Lutyens set "I travelled among unknown men" in her Voice of Quiet Waters, op. 84 for mixec choir and ensemble (1973).[https://uymp.co.uk/publications/elisabeth-lutyens-voice-of-quiet-waters-op84 Voice of Quiet Waters, Op.84, University of York Music Press]
• Arthur Somervell set eight sections from "On the Power of Sound" as a cantata for chorus and orchestra in 1894.[https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Musical_Times_and_Singing_Class_Circular/f0Ke4i1XJNgC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Arthur+Somervell+and+Wordsworth&pg=PA100&printsec=frontcover 'Highbury Philharmonic Society'], in The Musical Times, Vol. 39 (1898), p. 100 His Meditation on Wordsworth’s Intimations of Immortality for baritone solo and chorus, was first premiered in 1907 but re-written in 1934.[https://imslp.org/wiki/Ode_on_the_Intimations_of_Immortality_(Somervell%2C_Arthur) 'Ode on the Intimations of Immortality (Somervell, Arthur)'], score at IMSLP
• William Walton set "Remembrance of Collins" in his song cycle A Song for the Lord Mayor's Table in 1962.Richard Stokes. The Penguin Book of English Song (2016) pp. 298-312

Margaret Louisa Woods portrayed the young Wordsworth in her novel A Poet's Youth (1923).

Ken Russell's 1978 film William and Dorothy portrays the relationship between William and his sister Dorothy.{{Cite web|title=William and Dorothy (1978)|url=https://www2.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b6a6847c8|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180104152432/http://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b6a6847c8|url-status=dead|archive-date=4 January 2018|access-date=2021-08-04|website=BFI|language=en}}

Wordsworth and Coleridge's friendship is examined by Julien Temple in his 2000 film Pandaemonium.{{Cite news|last=Van Gelder|first=Lawrence |date=2001-07-13|title=FILM IN REVIEW; 'Pandaemonium'|language=en-US|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/13/movies/film-in-review-pandaemonium.html|access-date=2021-08-04|issn=0362-4331}}

Wordsworth has appeared as a character in works of fiction, including:

• William Kinsolving – Mister Christian. 1996
• Jasper Fforde – The Eyre Affair. 2001
• Val McDermid – The Grave Tattoo. 2006
• Sue Limb – The Wordsmiths at Gorsemere. 2008

Isaac Asimov's 1966 novelisation of the 1966 film Fantastic Voyage sees Dr. Peter Duval quoting Wordsworth's The Prelude as the miniaturised submarine sails through the cerebral fluid surrounding a human brain, comparing it to the "strange seas of thought".

Taylor Swift's 2020 album Folklore alludes to Wordsworth in her bonus track "The Lakes", which is thought to be about the Lake District.{{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/53752617|title=Taylor Swift dedicates Folklore song to the Lake District|date=August 12, 2020|website=BBC}}

In April 2020, the Royal Mail issued a series of postage stamps to mark the 250th anniversary of the birth of Wordsworth. Ten 1st class stamps were issued featuring Wordsworth and all the major British poets of the Romantic era: William Blake, John Keats, Lord Byron, John Clare, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Mary Robinson, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Walter Scott. Each stamp included an extract from one of their most popular and enduring works, with Wordsworth's "The Rainbow" selected for the poet.{{cite news |title=New stamps issued on 250th anniversary of William Wordsworth's birth |url=https://www.itv.com/news/2020-04-07/new-stamps-issued-on-250th-anniversary-of-william-wordsworths-birth |access-date=1 October 2022 |publisher=ITV}}

{{main|List of poems by William Wordsworth}}

{{columns-list|colwidth=27em|

• Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems (1798)
• "Simon Lee"
• "We are Seven"
• "Lines Written in Early Spring"
• "Expostulation and Reply"
• "The Tables Turned"
• "The Thorn"
• "Lines Composed A Few Miles above Tintern Abbey"
• Lyrical Ballads, with Other Poems (1800)
• Preface to the Lyrical Ballads
• "Strange fits of passion have I known"M. H. Abrams, editor of The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic Period, writes of these five poems: "This and the four following pieces are often grouped by editors as the 'Lucy poems,' even though 'A slumber did my spirit seal' does not identify the 'she' who is the subject of that poem. All but the last were written in 1799, while Wordsworth and his sister were homesick in Germany. There has been diligent speculation about Lucy's identity, but it remains speculative. The one certainty is that she is not the girl of Wordsworth's 'Lucy Gray'" (Abrams 2000).
• "She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways"
• "Three years she grew"
• "A Slumber Did my Spirit Seal"
• "I travelled among unknown men"
• "Lucy Gray"
• "The Two April Mornings"
• "Nutting"
• "The Ruined Cottage"
• "Michael"
• "The Kitten at Play"
• Poems, in Two Volumes (1807)
• "Resolution and Independence"
• "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" Also known as "Daffodils"
• "My Heart Leaps Up"
• "Ode: Intimations of Immortality"
• "Ode to Duty"
• "The Solitary Reaper"
• "Elegiac Stanzas"
• "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802"
• "London, 1802"
• "The World Is Too Much with Us"
• "French Revolution" (1810){{cite news |last=Wordsworth |first=William |date=4 January 1810 |title=French Revolution |url=https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Poems_(Wordsworth,_1815)/Volume_2/French_Revolution |work=The Friend |issue=20 |access-date=8 June 2018}}
• Guide to the Lakes (1810)
• "To the Cuckoo"
• The Excursion (1814)
• Laodamia (1815, 1845)
• The White Doe of Rylstone (1815)
• Peter Bell (1819)
• Ecclesiastical Sonnets (1822)
• The Prelude (1850)

}}

{{Clear}}

{{reflist}}

{{Portal|poetry}}

• Juliet Barker. Wordsworth: A Life, HarperCollins, New York, 2000, {{ISBN|978-0060787318}}
• Jeffrey Cox, William Wordsworth, Second-Generation Romantic: Contesting Poetry After Waterloo, 2021, ISBN 978-1108837613
• Hunter Davies, William Wordsworth: A Biography, Frances Lincoln, London, 2009, {{ISBN|978-0-7112-3045-3}}
• Stephen Gill, William Wordsworth: A Life, Oxford University Press, 1989, {{ISBN|978-0192827470}}
• Emma Mason, The Cambridge Introduction to William Wordsworth (Cambridge University Press, 2010)
• {{Cite EB1911|wstitle=Wordsworth, William|volume=28|pages=826–831|first=William|last=Minto|author-link=William Minto|first2=Hugh|last2=Chisholm|author-link2=Hugh Chisholm}}
• Mary Moorman, William Wordsworth, A Biography: The Early Years, 1770–1803 v. 1, Oxford University Press, 1957, {{ISBN|978-0198115656}}
• Mary Moorman, William Wordsworth: A Biography: The Later Years, 1803–1850 v. 2, Oxford University Press, 1965, {{ISBN|978-0198116172}}
• M. R. Tewari, One Interior Life—A Study of the Nature of Wordsworth's Poetic Experience (New Delhi: S. Chand & Company Ltd, 1983)
• Report to Wordsworth, Written by Boey Kim Cheng, as a direct reference to his poems "Composed Upon Westminster Bridge" and "The World Is Too Much with Us"
• Daniel Robinson, The Oxford Handbook of William Wordsworth, Oxford University Press, 2015, {{ISBN|9780199662128}}
• [https://eb11.uvic.ca/wordsworth_william.html Duncan Wu, “William Wordsworth,” in Then & Now: Romantic-Era Poets in the Encyclopædia Britannica, 1910-1911, ed. G. Kim Blank (2023)]

{{Sister project links|s=Author:William Wordsworth|wikt=no|v=British Romantic poetry|n=no|b=no}}

• [https://archive.org/details/memoirswilliamw00unkngoog Internet archive of Volume 1 of Christopher Wordsworth's 1851 biography]
• [https://archive.org/details/memoirsofwilliam02word2 Internet archive of Volume 2 of Christopher Wordsworth's 1851 biography]
• {{Gutenberg author | id=2879}}
• {{Internet Archive author |sname=William Wordsworth}}
• {{Librivox author |id=1639}}
• William Wordsworth Collection. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book andManuscript Library, Yale University.
• [https://archivesspace.amherst.edu/repositories/2/resources/246 Cornelius Patton (AC 1883) William Wordsworth Manuscript Collection] at the Amherst College Archives & Special Collections

{{S-start}}

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{{s-bef|before=Robert Southey}}

{{s-ttl|title=British Poet Laureate|years=1843–1850}}

{{s-aft|after=Alfred Tennyson}}

{{S-end}}

{{William Wordsworth}}

{{Romanticism}}

{{Poets Laureate of the United Kingdom}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wordsworth, William}}

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William