William Wordsworth
- William Wordsworth: BiographyPoet William Wordsworth worked with Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Lyrical Ballads (1798). The collection, which contained Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey," introduced Romanticism to English poetry. Wordsworth also showed his affinity for nature with the famous poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud." He became England's poet laureate in 1843, a role he held until his death in 1850...
- William Wordsworth: British LibraryThe poet William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, Cumberland on 7 April 1770. Much of his poetry was inspired by the dramatic landscapes of the Lake District, and his work did much to alter public perceptions of that part of England...
- William Wordsworth: Poetry FoundationWilliam Wordsworth was one of the founders of English Romanticism and one its most central figures and important intellects. He is remembered as a poet of spiritual and epistemological speculation, a poet concerned with the human relationship to nature and a fierce advocate of using the vocabulary and speech patterns of common people in poetry...
Research & Reference
- William Wordsworth: BritannicaWilliam Wordsworth, (born April 7, 1770, Cockermouth, Cumberland, England—died April 23, 1850, Rydal Mount, Westmorland), English poet whose Lyrical Ballads (1798), written with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped launch the English Romantic movement...
- Wordsworth, William: Credo ReferenceWilliam has always been regarded as the keystone in the arch of English Romantic poetry. His influence has been extensive and was powerful on his contemporaries, including Samuel Taylor COLERIDGE, Lord BYRON, Percy Bysshe SHELLEY, and John KEATS. He eventually became poet laureate, a figure of national stature much visited and celebrated. William was born in northwestern England on the edge of the Lake District, educated at a local grammar school and at Cambridge University. He became active in politics and lived in France for a time at the height of the revolutionary period. He had a daughter out of wedlock by a French girl in Orleans, returning to England to devote himself to the profession of poetry...
Streaming Media
- William Wordsworth (A Concise Biography)Opening by introducing William Wordsworth's boyhood home in the Lake District of England, this film from the Famous Authors series offers an overview of the writer's work and biography. The Lake District greatly inspired Wordsworth and resulted in his apparent fascination with nature. The film contextualizes the poet's life at Cambridge and then in France, the ongoing conditions of the French Revolution, and the important relationships of Wordsworth's life, including those with Annette Vallon; Mary Hutchinson; his sister, Dorothy; and the poet Samuel Coleridge, with whom he wrote Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems. (37 minutes)
- William Wordsworth: William and DorothyA sensitive and insightful program about the poetry of William Wordsworth and the landscape and personality that lay behind and within it. With David Warner playing Wordsworth, this dramatization by Ken Russell presents some of the major poems against the background of Wordsworth country, and shows us his intense and troubled relationship with his talented sister Dorothy, who is the subject (or object) of many poems and whose specter and editorial influence hover over many others.
- On Westminster Bridge: William Wordsworth–Poet's Guide to BritainWordsworth’s great sonnet is a celebration of the beauty of London at dawn. This film explores exactly how the poem came about at this crucial turning point in Wordsworth’s life. Owen Sheers looks at how the apparently simple poem is built and explores how Wordsworth’s admiration of Milton’s sonnets encouraged him to adopt the form for his 1802 London sonnets. He also examines how other poets characterized London in the early nineteenth century before turning to contemporary poets, including Patience Agbabi and Tobias Hill, to discuss 21st century visions of London and to hear work inspired by Wordsworth.
Perspectives
William Wordsworth, Second-Generation Romantic
William Wordsworth, Second-Generation Romantic provides a truly comprehensive reading of 'late' Wordsworth and the full arc of his career from (1814-1840) revealing that his major poems after Waterloo contest poetic and political issues with his younger contemporaries: Keats, Shelley and Byron. Refuting conventional models of influence, where Wordsworth 'fathers' the younger poets, Cox demonstrates how Wordsworth's later writing evolved in response to 'second generation' romanticism. After exploring the ways in which his younger contemporaries rewrote his 'Excursion', this volume examines how Wordsworth's 'Thanksgiving Ode' enters into a complex conversation with Leigh Hunt and Byron; how the delayed publication of 'Peter Bell' could be read as a reaction to the Byronic hero; how the older poet's River Duddon sonnets respond to Shelley's 'Mont Blanc'; and how his later volumes, particularly 'Memorials of a Tour in Italy, 1837', engage in a complicated erasure of poets who both followed and predeceased him.
William Wordsworth
"In William Wordsworth: A Literary Life, John Williams provides an absorbing account of the evolution of the poet's literary career. An invaluable introduction to Wordsworth and English Romanticism, the book also challenges a number of commonly-held assumptions. At the outset, Williams disputes the claim made by some recent critics that Wordsworth's early years were relatively carefree, and he goes on to assess the difficulties that beset him as a young poet with radical political sympathies attempting to publish his work during the turbulent years of the 1790s and early 1800s." "Wordsworth's increasingly ambivalent attitude towards seeking out a public readership beyond his immediate circle of friends and admirers is a central concern of the book, as is the pervasively autobiographical nature of the poetry he wrote. Fresh insights are offered on both the early Hawkshead years, and on the nature of Wordsworth's shifting political allegiances, leading to a reappraisal of the later poetry so frequently ignored by critics on the grounds of its inferiority. While not disputing the fact that Wordsworth's poetical powers diminished after 1820, Williams seeks to reinstate the later work as an important, rewarding and worthwhile field of study."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
The complete poetical works of William Wordsworth
Request to view the complete poems of William Wordsworth from the McKee Library Vault.