Wordsworth , William , 1770-1850 , poet

William Wordsworth was born in the Lake District in 1770. An orphan by the age of 13, he was sent to be educated at Hawkshead grammar school. He then moved on to St John's College, Cambridge University, where he achieved only a pass in his degree. In 1791 Wordsworth travelled to France, where he formed a romantic attachment to a woman named Marie Vallon. Before their child was born in December 1792, Wordsworth had to return to England and was cut off by the outbreak of war between England and France. He did not meet his daughter Caroline until she was nine years old.
For the next few years he remained in London, associating with radicals such as William Godwin. In 1795, a legacy from a friend enabled him to be reunited with his sister Dorothy, and the pair moved into Alfoxden House near Bristol, where they met Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey. Wordsworth and Southey embarked on a partnership which was to change the former's style of poetry from long poems of social protest the short lyrical and dramatic poems for which he is best known. In 1798 Coleridge and Wordsworth published Lyrical Ballads. It is at this point that Wordsworth began work on The Prelude, a poem which was finally published in 1850.
Following a tour of the Lake District, the Wordsworths and Coleridge moved to the Lake District, the former two moving into Dove Cottage in Ambleside. In 1802, William married his childhood companion, Mary Hutchinson. As their family grew, the Wordsworths moved several times, finally settling at Rydal Mount in 1813. During this time, Wordsworth wrote and published some of his best known work, including Poems in two volumes (1807), Poems (1815), The excursion (1814), The White Doe of Rylstone (1815), Thanksgiving ode (1816), Peter Bell (1819), The Waggonier (1819) and Ecclesiastical sketches (1822).Wordsworth was made Poet Laureate in 1843, a post which he held until his death in 1850.