Give a brief Life-Sketch WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

Ans.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-1850)

Introduction: William Wordsworth started with Samuel Taylor Coleridge the English Romantic movement with their collection Lyrical Ballads in 1799. When many poets still wrote about ancient heroes in grandiloquent style, Wordsworth focused on the nature, children, the poor, common people, and used ordinary words to express his personal feelings. His definition of poetry as the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings arising from “emotion recollected in tranquility” was shared by a number of his followers.

His Birth and Parentage: William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, Cumberland, in the Lake District. His father was John Wordsworth, Sir James Lowther’s attorney-the fifth Baronet Lowther was the most feared and hated aristocrat in all of Cumberland and Westmoreland. However, the magnificent landscape deeply affected Wordsworth’s imagination and gave him a love of nature. He lost his mother when he was eight and five years later his father. The domestic problems separated Wordsworth from his beloved and neurotic Dorothy, who was a very important person in his life. Dorothy, his sister had especially fresh contact with nature from a very early age.

First Publication and Lyrical Ballads: In his ‘Preface to Lyrical Ballads which is called the manifesto of English Romantic criticism, Wordsworth calls his poems ‘Experimental’. 1793 saw Wordsworth’s first published poetry with the collections An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches. He received a legacy of £ 900 from Raisley Calvert in 1795 so that he could pursue writing poetry. That year, he also met Samuel Taylor Coleridge in Somerset. The two poets quickly developed a close friendship. In 1797, Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy, moved to Alfoxton House, Somerset, just a few miles away from Coleridge’s home in Nether Stowey. Together, Wordsworth and Coleridge produced Lyrical Ballads (1798), an important work in the English Romantic movement. The volume had neither the name of Wordsworth nor Coleridge as the author. One of Wordsworth’s most famous poems, Tintern Abbey was published in the work, alongwith Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The second edition, published in 1800, had only Wordsworth listed as the author, and included a preface to the poems, which was significantly augmented in the 1802 edition. This Preface to Lyrical Ballads is considered a central work of Romantic literary theory. In it, Wordsworth discusses what he sees as the elements of a new type of poetry, one based on the real language of men and which avoids the poetic diction of much eighteenth-century poetry.

His Old Age or Final Days of His Life and His Death: Wordsworth’s life was happy despite prolonged illness of Dorothy. He was on demand everywhere, and moved frequently in London society. He also continued to make tours and visited Switzerland, Wales, Scotland and Italy. Rydal Mount became a place of literary pilgrimage. He lived a cheerful life in constant contact with Nature, and had friendly relations with his neighbours, During the last year of his life, he was not keeping well, and had also suffered a loss of memory. Just about a fortnight after he had celebrated his 80th birthday on April 7, he died of pneumonia on the 23rd April, 1850 and was buried at St. Oswald’s Church in Grasmere.