William Wordsworth Birth Anniversary
Wordsworth made his debut 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.
sujathadh
William Wordsworth, born April 7, 1770, Cockermouth, Cumberland, England died April 23, 1850, Rydal Mount, Westmorland, an English poet whose Lyrical Ballads (1798), written with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped launch the English Romantic movement.
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, 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 baptized together. They had three other siblings: Richard, the eldest, who became a lawyer; John, 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.
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.
Early life
First publication and Lyrical Ballads
Wordsworth made his debut 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. 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.
Early career
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 became 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 Race down House in Dorset a property of the Pinney family to the west of Pilsdon Pen. They walked in the area for about two hours every day, and the nearby hills consoled Dorothy as she pined for the fells of her native Lakeland. She wrote,
The Borderers
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, but 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 revision.
Marriage and children
In 1802, Lowther's heir, William Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale, paid the £4,000 owed to Wordsworth's father through Lowther's failure to pay his aide. 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. 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 – 25 July 1875). Vicar of Brigham, Cumberland, and Rector of Plumbland, Cumberland. Buried at Highgate Cemetery (west side). Married four times:
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 the first biographer of his friend, Oscar Wilde.
Helen Ross (died 1854). No children.
Mary Ann Dolan (who died after 1858) had one daughter Dora.
Dora Wordsworth (1858–1934)
Mary Gamble. No children.
Dora Wordsworth (16 August 1804 – 9 July 1847). They Married Edward Quillinan in 1841.
Thomas Wordsworth (15 June 1806 – 1 December 1812).
Catherine Wordsworth (6 September 1808 – 4 June 1812).
William "Willy" Wordsworth (12 May 1810 – 1883). Married Fanny Graham and had four children: Mary Louisa, William, Reginald, Gordon
