Short biography of William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth was born on 7^th April,1770,in Cockermouth in Cumberland.His father was John Wordsworth who worked as an agent  and rent collector for Sir James Lowther.His mother was Anne.Wordsworth was the second of their five children.After his mother’s death in 1778 he was sent to Hawkshed Grammar School near Windermere.His father died in 1783 when he was at the age of 13.In 1787,he went up to St.John’s college,Cambridge.Two years later he went on a walking tour of France,Switzerland and Germany and in 1791,after graduation,trekked through Wales. Financial problems and the political situation forced him to return to England, where he began to give wholehearted support to the radical philosophy of Thomas Paine and William Godwin, openly expressing their ideas in his own poetry.

He married Mary Hutchinson in 1802 (32), and acquired two patrons in Sir George Beaumont and Sir William Lowther, the latter settling his cousin’s debt to Wordsworth. . By 1810 they had five children, but their happiness was tempered by the loss at sea of William's brother John (1805), the alienation from Coleridge in 1810, and the death of two children in 1812. In 1813 Wordsworth received an appointment as Distributor of Stamps for Westmorland, and the £400 per year which went with this post made him financially secure.

Wordsworth’s literary career began with Descriptive sketches. His powers peaked with Poems in Two Volumes (1807), and his reputation continued to grow; even his harshest reviewers recognized his popularity and the originality.

Finally fully reconciled to Coleridge, the two of them toured the Rhineland in 1828. Durham University granted him an honorary Doctor of Civil Law degree in 1838, and Oxford conferred the same honor the next year. When Robert Southey died in 1843, Wordsworth was named Poet Laureate. He died in 1850, and his wife published the much-revised Prelude that summer.