Born: April 7, 1770 Died: April 23, 1850
Biography
Let’s set the stage: it’s April 7, 1770, in the quaint market town of Cockermouth, England. A child is born who will grow up to write poetry that makes people stop, stare at a daffodil, and feel emotionally attacked by a cloud. That child? William Wordsworth.
Wordsworth wasn’t just a nature lover—he was the poet who romanticized nature before Instagram made it trendy. The rolling hills and serene lakes of the Lake District were not just a backdrop for him—they were practically co-authors. Or at least very enthusiastic collaborators. After losing both parents at a young age, Wordsworth turned inward, and then outward—toward the landscape around him—for meaning, guidance, and a sense of continuity. It’s no wonder he’d go on to write lines like “The world is too much with us,” because, frankly, it was—and still is.
Educated at St. John’s College, Cambridge, Wordsworth wasn’t your average student. He was more interested in hiking across Europe and contemplating the meaning of life than in academic accolades. While bumming around revolutionary France, he became a little too emotionally invested in the ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity. But when the French Revolution began eating its young (as revolutions tend to do), Wordsworth’s idealism took a hit, and the resulting existential crisis fueled some of his most introspective work.
Enter: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, fellow poet, philosophical sparring partner, and probably the only guy who could match Wordsworth’s level of brooding eloquence. Together, they birthed Lyrical Ballads (1798), which was basically a mic-drop moment for English literature. With poems like “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey” and Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” they declared war on the overly ornate, elitist poetry of the past and instead championed emotion, nature, and the voice of the common man. Wordsworth’s preface to the second edition is now considered the Romantic movement’s manifesto, and yes, it was every bit as philosophical and dramatic as you’d expect.
Wordsworth’s poetic voice matured over the years, evolving from rebellious naturalist to national moralist. His later works (like The Prelude, a sprawling autobiographical poem he obsessively revised but never published in his lifetime) became more reflective, formal, and spiritually inclined. He believed that the soul of man was inextricably linked with the natural world—a sort of “eco-theology” long before the phrase was coined.
In 1843, he was crowned Poet Laureate of Great Britain, mostly because no one else could write 14 lines about a rock and make you feel like crying. He held the post until his death in 1850, but by that time, he had become the establishment he once wrote poems against. Still, even with his shift from radical to respectable, Wordsworth left behind a legacy that helped reorient poetry from aristocratic indulgence to emotional necessity.
If Edgar Allan Poe is the poet of the tortured soul, then Wordsworth is the poet of the sensitive introvert with a field journal and too many feelings. He taught generations that you could find the sublime not only in cathedrals and courtrooms but in a blade of grass, a country walk, or a single yellow flower.
Notable Facts
-
He was BFFs (and sometimes frenemies) with Coleridge. Their bromance helped define English Romanticism.
-
He raised his illegitimate daughter in secret. Her existence wasn’t widely known during his lifetime.
-
He wrote a 13-book autobiographical poem (The Prelude) that was only published after his death and is now considered one of his greatest achievements.
-
He got more conservative with age. Like, “Hey, kids, get off my meadow!” levels of conservative.
-
He never stopped believing in the sacred power of nature. Even as Poet Laureate, he still waxed poetic about clouds.
Legacy
William Wordsworth didn’t just change poetry—he changed how people felt about poetry. He stripped it of its powdered wig and velvet coat and instead gave it hiking boots and a moral compass. Today, his fingerprints are all over everything from modern environmental writing to your college roommate who cried during their first mountain sunrise.
He gave voice to the inner life of the ordinary person and made emotional vulnerability and spiritual longing not just acceptable—but poetic. And for that, we owe him a quiet moment in nature…and maybe a single, dramatic tear.
