William Wordsworth Context:
● William Wordsworth was born on April 7th, 1770, in Cockermouth,
Cumberland, England.
● Wordsworth was born in the Lake District of northern England, the second of
five children of a modestly prosperous estate manager
● William’s parents, John and Ann, died during his boyhood
● Raised amid the mountains of Cumberland alongside the River Derwent,
Wordsworth grew up in a rustic society, and spent a great deal of his time
playing outdoors, in what he would later remember as a pure communion with
nature.
● Wordsworth believed that, upon being born, human beings move from a
perfect, idealized realm into the imperfect, un-ideal earth. As children, some
memory of the former purity and glory in which they lived remains, best
perceived in the solemn and joyous relationship of the child to the beauties of
nature. But as children grow older, the memory fades, and the magic of nature
dies.
● Wordsworth received an excellent education in classics, literature, and
mathematics, but the chief advantage to him there was the chance to indulge
in the boyhood pleasures of living and playing in the outdoors
● he returned in 1791 to France, where he formed a passionate attachment to a
Frenchwoman, Annette Vallon. But before their child was born in December
1792, Wordsworth had to return to England and was cut off there by the
outbreak of war between England and France.
● The three or four years that followed his return to England were the darkest of
Wordsworth’s life. Unprepared for any profession, rootless, virtually penniless,
bitterly hostile to his own country’s opposition to the French, he lived in
London in the company of radicals like William Godwin and learned to feel a
profound sympathy for the abandoned mothers, beggars, children, vagrants,
and victims of England’s wars
● William Wordsworth was born on April 7th, 1770, in Cockermouth,
Cumberland, England.
● Wordsworth was born in the Lake District of northern England, the second of
five children of a modestly prosperous estate manager
● William’s parents, John and Ann, died during his boyhood
● Raised amid the mountains of Cumberland alongside the River Derwent,
Wordsworth grew up in a rustic society, and spent a great deal of his time
playing outdoors, in what he would later remember as a pure communion with
nature.
● Wordsworth believed that, upon being born, human beings move from a
perfect, idealized realm into the imperfect, un-ideal earth. As children, some
memory of the former purity and glory in which they lived remains, best
perceived in the solemn and joyous relationship of the child to the beauties of
nature. But as children grow older, the memory fades, and the magic of nature
dies.
● Wordsworth received an excellent education in classics, literature, and
mathematics, but the chief advantage to him there was the chance to indulge
in the boyhood pleasures of living and playing in the outdoors
● he returned in 1791 to France, where he formed a passionate attachment to a
Frenchwoman, Annette Vallon. But before their child was born in December
1792, Wordsworth had to return to England and was cut off there by the
outbreak of war between England and France.
● The three or four years that followed his return to England were the darkest of
Wordsworth’s life. Unprepared for any profession, rootless, virtually penniless,
bitterly hostile to his own country’s opposition to the French, he lived in
London in the company of radicals like William Godwin and learned to feel a
profound sympathy for the abandoned mothers, beggars, children, vagrants,
and victims of England’s wars
