William Wordsworth , short note for UP PGT / TGT English

                    William Wordsworth

 Personal Life and Background

1. William Wordsworth was born on April 7, 1770.
2. He was born at Cockermouth, Cumberland, in the Lake District, England.
3. He died on April 23, 1850, at the age of 80.
4. The cause of his death was Pleurisy.
5. He is buried at St. Oswald's Church in Grasmere.
6. His father was John Wordsworth, a law agent.
7. His mother was Anne Cookson.
8. He lost his mother in 1778 when he was only eight years old.
9. His father died in 1783 when William was thirteen.
10. He attended Hawkshead Grammar School for his early education.
11. He graduated from St. John's College, Cambridge, where he studied from 1787 to 1791.
12. He visited France for the first time in 1790 during a walking tour of the Alps.
13. In France, he fell in love with Annette Vallon.
14. He had an illegitimate daughter named Caroline with Annette Vallon.
15. He met his daughter for the first time on a French beach when she was 9 years old.
16. He married his cousin Mary Hutchinson in 1802.
17. His sister Dorothy Wordsworth was his lifelong companion and a major influence on his poetry.
18. He received a legacy of 900 pounds per year upon his uncle’s death, providing him financial stability.
19. He lived at Racedown Lodge starting in 1795.
20. In 1797, he moved to Alfoxden House to be near his friend S.T. Coleridge.
21. He settled at Dove Cottage, Grasmere, in 1799.
22. His final residence was Rydal Mount, where he moved in 1813.
23. He was appointed the Distributor of Stamps for Westmoreland in 1813.
24. He was appointed Poet Laureate of England in 1843.
25. He succeeded Robert Southey as Poet Laureate.
26. Following his death in 1850, Alfred Lord Tennyson became the Poet Laureate.

Lyrical Ballads (1798)

27. Lyrical Ballads was first published in 1798.
28. It was a collaborative work between Wordsworth and S.T. Coleridge.
29. It is considered the Magna Carta of Romanticism.
30. The publication of this work marked the official beginning of the Romantic Age.
31. The first edition contained 23 poems in total.
32. 19 poems were contributed by Wordsworth.
33. 4 poems were contributed by Coleridge.
34. The first poem in the 1798 edition is Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner".
35. The final poem in the collection is Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey".
36. The second edition (1800) was published under Wordsworth's name only and included a famous Preface.
37. The third edition was released in 1802.
38. The fourth edition followed in 1805.
39. In the 1802 edition, Wordsworth added an Appendix on Poetic Diction.
40. The collection was first published in America in 1802.

The Prelude

41. The Prelude is regarded as Wordsworth’s Magnum Opus.
42. It is a long autobiographical poem.
43. Its subtitle is "Growth of a Poet's Mind".
44. The poem is dedicated to S.T. Coleridge.
45. It is written in Blank Verse.
46. Although completed in 1805, it was published posthumously in 1850.
47. It was published by his wife, Mary Wordsworth, after his death.
48. It was originally intended to be the introduction to a larger work titled "The Recluse".
49. The version completed in 1805 consisted of 13 books.
50. The final version published in 1850 was expanded to 14 books.

Major Poems and Collections

51. "Tintern Abbey" was composed in July 1798 after his second visit to the Wye river.
52. Its full title is "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey...".
53. "Ode: Intimations of Immortality" was composed between 1802 and 1806.
54. The Immortality Ode is based on the philosophical concept of Pre-existence.
55. It uses the Pindaric Ode structure.
56. "The Solitary Reaper" was inspired by his 1803 tour of Scotland.
57. The reaper in the poem is singing in Erse (Gaelic).
58. "Daffodils" (I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud) was published in his 1807 collection.
59. The poem "London, 1802" is a sonnet addressing John Milton.
60. "The World Is Too Much With Us" is a sonnet that criticizes modern materialism.
61. "Michael" (1800) is a famous Pastoral Narrative poem.
62. It tells the story of a shepherd named Michael and his son Luke.
63. "Resolution and Independence" is also widely known as "The Leech-Gatherer".
64. "Ode to Duty" (1805) addresses Duty as the "Stern Daughter of the Voice of God".
65. "Lucy Poems" is a group of five lyrics about an idealized, mysterious girl named Lucy.
66. These include poems like "She dwelt among the untrodden ways" and "A slumber did my spirit seal".
67. "The Rainbow" (My Heart Leaps Up) contains the famous line "The Child is father of the Man".
68. "Laodamia" (1815) draws its subject from classical Greek sources, specifically Euripides.
69. "Peter Bell" (1819) was dedicated to the poet Robert Southey.
70. "Ecclesiastical Sonnets" (1822) focuses on the history of the Church in England.
71. "The Borderers" is the only drama (play) Wordsworth ever attempted to write.
72. "The Excursion" (1814) was published as the second part of the unfinished The Recluse.

Literary Theory and Philosophy

73. Wordsworth defined poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings".
74. He added that poetry takes its origin from "emotions recollected in tranquillity".
75. He believed that the language of poetry should be a "selection of the real language of men".
76. He strongly opposed the artificial diction of 18th-century Neo-classical poetry.
77. He famously argued that "Every great poet is a teacher".
78. He stated there is no essential difference between the language of prose and poetry.
79. He aimed to focus on common life and humble subjects.
80. He was deeply influenced by the early ideals of the French Revolution (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity).
81. He is often described as a Pantheist, seeing God’s presence throughout all of nature.
82. His philosophy emphasizes the "Primary Laws of our nature" found in rural settings.

Critical Opinions and Titles

83. Robert Browning called him "The Lost Leader" for turning away from radicalism to accept the Laureateship.
84. P.B. Shelley critically labeled him a "Moral Eunuch".
85. John Keats described Wordsworth’s poetry as the "Egotistical Sublime".
86. Matthew Arnold observed that Wordsworth has "no style of his own".
87. Arnold also praised his work for having "healing power".
88. Hazlitt called him the "High Priest of Nature".
89. He is widely recognized as the "Father of English Romanticism".
90. S.T. Coleridge provided the first major critique of Wordsworth’s theories in his work Biographia Literaria.
91. T.S. Eliot criticized him for not always following his own poetic theories in practice.

Nature as a Theme

92. To Wordsworth, nature was a living personality.
93. He viewed nature as a moral teacher, guardian, and nurse to the human soul.
94. He was influenced by Rousseau’s "Return to Nature" philosophy.
95. Nature is seen as an "anchor" and "guide" for his thoughts in Tintern Abbey.
96. He believed nature never betrays the heart that truly loves her.
97. He often sought "Aseptic" or "Healing" qualities in natural landscapes to escape city life.

Exam-Oriented Quotes

98. "The Child is father of the Man" (from The Rainbow).
99. "Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour" (from London, 1802).
100. "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting" (from Immortality Ode).
101. "The still, sad music of humanity" (from Tintern Abbey).
102. "Nature never did betray / The heart that loved her" (from Tintern Abbey).
103. "Stern Daughter of the Voice of God!" (referring to Duty).
104. "Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers" (from The World Is Too Much With Us).
105. "Plain living and high thinking are no more" (from London, 1802).
106. "Ten thousand saw I at a glance" (referring to the daffodils).
107. "The music in my heart I bore / Long after it was heard no more" (from The Solitary Reaper).
108. "To me the meanest flower that blows can give / Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears" (from Immortality Ode).
109. "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive / But to be young was very heaven!" (regarding the French Revolution).
110. "A slumber did my spirit seal" (from the Lucy poems).
111. "Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart" (praising Milton).
112. "One impulse from a vernal wood / May teach you more of man" (from The Tables Turned).
113. "Come forth into the light of things / Let Nature be your teacher" (from The Tables Turned).

Additional Key Facts

1. His first published work was "An Evening Walk" in 1793.
2. He was part of the "Lake Poets" group with Coleridge and Southey.
3. Dorothy Wordsworth’s journals, like the Grasmere Journals, provided raw inspiration for many of his poems.
4. He visited the Alps in 1790.
5. He suffered a period of disillusionment after the French Revolution's "Reign of Terror".
6. He and Mary Hutchinson had five children together.
7. Two of his children tragically died in 1812.
8. He was a Whig supporter in his political life.
9. The Recluse was intended to be a three-part philosophical poem, but was never finished.
10. The Prelude was designed to be the "ante-chapel" to the "Gothic church" of The Recluse.
11. He rejected the "Poetic Diction" of the Augustan Age.
12. He championed the idea of the poet as a "man speaking to men".
13. He used the term "Inward Eye" to describe the "bliss of solitude" in Daffodils.
14. Tintern Abbey describes four distinct stages of his developing relationship with nature.
15. He stayed at Dove Cottage from 1799 to 1808.
16. He wrote "Strange fits of passion have I known" as part of the Lucy series.
17. The girl in "The Solitary Reaper" is singing alone in a field.
18. "Resolution and Independence" was written in the Rhyme Royal stanza.
19. "Laodamia" is noted for its more formal, classical style.
20. He wrote over 500 sonnets during his career.
21. Most of his sonnets follow the Petrarchan form.
22. "Elegiac Stanzas" was written after the death of his brother John Wordsworth in a shipwreck.
23. The line "A deep distress hath humanized my Soul" appears in the Peele Castle poem.
24. "The Fountain" features a dialogue with an old man named Matthew.
25. "Simon Lee" is another early poem focusing on the plight of the elderly and poor.
26. "The Idiot Boy" was one of the poems criticized for its simplicity in Lyrical Ballads.
27. Matthew Arnold edited a significant selection of his poems in 1879.
28. Arnold believed Wordsworth’s prime creative period was between 1798 and 1808.
29. He held the post of Distributor of Stamps to help support his family.
30. He was a central figure of the First Generation of Romantic poets.
31. He is buried in a simple grave in the Grasmere churchyard.
32. "The Excursion" contains nine books .
33. "Yarrow Unvisited" and "Yarrow Visited" were inspired by his Scottish travels.
34. He refused to write any official poems while serving as Poet Laureate.
35. He believed the human mind was the primary subject of his philosophical songs.
36. He used the phrase "Wisely idle" to describe his contemplative state.
37. He suffered from the death of his daughter Dora in 1847.
38. "Guilt and Sorrow" was an early poem reflecting his political radicalism.
39. His poem "To a Cuckoo" addresses the bird as a "wandering voice".
40. "To the Daisy" and "To the Small Celandine" are examples of his nature lyrics.
41. He often wrote about rural poor and outcasts.
42. "The Thorn" is a poem about a woman named Martha Ray.
43. "Lines Written in Early Spring" explores the "link" between nature and man.
44. He used Blank Verse extensively for his long philosophical poems.
45. He was often criticized for being too simplistic in his early work.
46. "Nutting" is an autobiographical poem about a childhood experience.
47. He describes his childhood as being "fostered alike by beauty and by fear" in The Prelude.
48. His trip to Germany in 1798-1799 was a period of homesickness but great productivity.
49. "Ruth" is another of his poems about a deserted woman.
50. He was a admirer of Geoffrey Chaucer, whose stanzas he sometimes used.
51. He believed that the imagination was a "plastic" or "creative" power.
52. He often revised his poems multiple times over many decades.
53. The Recluse was intended to survey "On Man, on Nature, and on Human Life".
54. He served as the Poet Laureate for seven years.
55. He was known for his "high thinking" and simple lifestyle.
56. His friendship with Coleridge cooled in later years due to Coleridge’s opium addiction.
57. He is often associated with the phrase "The Egotistical Sublime" as a critique of his self-focus.
58. He believed that even prose could be highly poetic.
59. He was a critic of the Industrial Revolution for moving people away from nature.
60. "The White Doe of Rylstone" is based on a local legend from Yorkshire.
61. He felt that the city was a place of "artificiality".
62. He emphasized the importance of childhood memories in forming the adult mind.
63. "Hart-Leap Well" is a poem about man's cruelty to animals.
64. He viewed the poet as a "sensitive" being with greater knowledge of human nature.
65. "To a Skylark" is one of his famous bird poems.
66. He preferred Grasmere for its peaceful, natural beauty.
67. He believed poetry should give pleasure to the reader.
68. "The Green Linnet" is another nature lyric.
69. He often walked many miles a day to find inspiration.
70. He was highly respected by the Victorian poets who followed him.
71. He is credited with transforming the direction of English literature.
72. "Lucy Gray" is a poem about a girl lost in the snow.
73. He believed in the "healing power" of natural landscapes.
74. He often addressed his sister Dorothy directly in his verse.
75. "Personal Talk" is a series of sonnets about his domestic life.
76. He believed that the heart was more important than the "meddling intellect".
77. "The Tables Turned" urges the reader to "quit your books" and go into nature.
78. He felt that science sometimes murders to dissect.
79. He was deeply spiritual, though not always in a conventional religious sense.
80. He is the most famous of all the Lake Poets.
81. His work often explores the theme of loneliness.
82. He wrote "The Sparrow's Nest" as a tribute to his sister.
83. He was a master of the sonnet form in the 19th century.
84. His poetry is often marked by a sense of melancholy and reflection.
85. He believed in the "spot of time"—moments of childhood that stay with us.
86. He died exactly 100 years before the mid-20th century.
87. His influence on English poetry remains immense and foundational for all Romantic studies.

 

1. Sonnet Series
2. The River Dudden Sonnets
3. The Ecclesiastical Sonnets
4. Sonnets Dedicated to Liberty
5. Miscellaneous Sonnets

 

1. POPULAR POEMS

 

1. ✓ The Excursion
2. ✓ The Prelude or Growth of a Poet’s Mind
3. To Milton
4. Upon Westminster Abbey
5. The Rainbow
6. We are Seven
7. The World is Too Much With Us
8. To The Cuckoo
9. ✓ The Daffodils
10. Lucy Gray
11. Simon Lee
12. Early Spring
13. Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known
14. ✓ Lucy Poems
15. The Elegiac Stanzas Suggested by a Picture of Peel Castle
16. ✓ The White Doe
17. The Wagoner
18. ✓ Yarrow Revisited
19. The Sailor’s Mother
20. Goody Blake
21. The Ruined Cottage
22. ✓ Descriptive Sketches
23. ✓ An Evening Walk
24. Effusion on the Death of James Hogg
25. She dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways
26. Three Years She Grew
27. Laodamia (a narrative poem)
28. Dion
29. Song at he Feast of Brougham Castle
30. The Affliction of Margaret
31. Resolutions and Independence (Leech Gatherer)
32. The Brothers
33. Guilt and Sorrow
34. ✓ Peter Bell
35. The Fountain
36. Poor Susan
37. Ruth
38. To a Skylark
39. Stepping Westword
40. To a Highland Girl
41. The Solitary Reaper
42. Intimation of Immortality from Recollection of Early Childhood (1803–07 but published in 1807)
43. ✓ Tintern Abbey
44. The Rainbow
45. Ode to Duty
46. The Idiot Boy
47. Michael
48. The Borderers – a Tragedy (drama)
49. Preface to the Lyrical Ballads (Criticism)

 

 

Quotes on William Wordsworth

 

1. “Lost leader” – Browning

 

2. “A Moral Eunuch” – Shelley

 

 3. “The Egotistical Sublime.” – Keats

 

 4. “High priest of Nature” – Arnold

 

 5. “His poetry is the reality; is philosophy is the illusion” – Mathew Arnold

 

 6. “I see in Wordsworth the natural man rising up against the spiritual man continually, and then he is no poet, but a philosopher at enmity against all true poetry of inspiration” – William Blake

 

 7. Robert Browning in the lost Leader (1845) on Wordsworth acceptance of the poet laureateship -----------

“Just for a handful of silver he left us,

Just for a riband to stick in his coat.” – (T-09)

 

 8. “Uttered nothing base” – A.L. Tennyson

 

 9. “Wordsworth is the poet of the ear just as Shelley is the poet of the eye, and never more felicitous than in conveying some phase of silence, tone of sound.” – Rickett

 

 10. “Wordsworth has awakened a kind of thought in sense.” – Shelley

 

 11. “He had not only sight, but insight.” – W.J. Long

 

 12. “Wordsworth conceived as poet that Nature was alive.” – S.A. Brooke

 

 13. “In this ode (Intimations of immortality) which Emerson called ‘The high Watermark of poetry in the nineteenth century’”

 

 14. “Nature herself seems to take the pen out of his hand and write with her bare, sheer penetrating power” – Mathew Arnold for his poem Michael

 

 15. As a poet of Nature, Huxley points out.

He had no eye for Nature “red in tooth and claw”

 

 16. “Wordsworth has no poetic style” – Arnold

 

 

Quotes by Wordsworth

 

1. “What is a poet? He is a man speaking to men” From preface of Lyrical Ballad

 2. “The poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society.”

 3. “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.”

 4. “That blessed mood,

In which the burthen of the mystery,

In which the heavy and the weary weight

of all this unintelligible world,

is lightened” – Tintern abbey

 5. “The sounding cataract haunted me like a passion.” (T-10) – Tintern abbey

 6. “The still, sad music of humanity of all the mighty world.” – Tintern abbey

 7. “We are laid asleep in body,

and become a living soul

That time is past,

And all its aching joys are now no more,

and all its dizzy raptures……….”

– Tintern Abbey

 8. “Nature never did betray the heart, that loved her” (T-01) – Tintern Abbey

 9. “If solitude, or fear or pain, or grief should be thy portion” – Tintern Abbey

 10. “To me the meanest flower that blows can give

Thoughts do often lie too deep for tears.”

– Intimations of immortality Ode

 

 11. “Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting

Not in entire forgetfulness,

and not in Utter nakedness

but trailing clouds of glory do we come.”

 

(T-01) – **Ode: Intimations of Immortality**

 

“Heaven lies about us in our infancy” – *Intimation of immortality*

“The moon doth with delight

Look round her when the heavens are bare” – *Intimation of immortality*

 

12. “With this key Shakespeare unlocked his heart” – “Scorn not the sonnet”

 

13. “Not without hope we suffer and we mourn.” – “Peele Castle”

 

14. “One impulse from a vernal wood,

    may teach you more of man,

    of moral evil and of good

    Than all the sages can.”

    (T-09) – “The Tables Turned”

 

15. “No Nightingale did ever chant

    more welcome notes to weary bands

    will no one tell me what she sings?

    perhaps the plaintive numbers flow

    for old, unhappy, far-off things,

    and battles long ago (T-10,21)” – “The Solitary Reaper”

 

16. “The music in my heart I bore

    Long after it was heard no more” – “The Solitary Reaper”

 

17. “Little we see in Nature that is ours……” – “The World is too much with us”

 

18. “This sea that bares her bosom” – “The World is too much with us”

 

19. “Dust as we are the immortal spirits grows” – “The World is too much with us”

 

20. “They flash upon that inward eye

    Which is the bliss of solitude; (P-09)

    And then my heart with pleasure fills

    And dances with the daffodils.”

    – “I wandered lonely as a cloud (Daffodils)”

 

21. “Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

    Tossing their heads in a sprightly dance”

    – “I wandered lonely as a cloud (Daffodils)”

 

22. “Bliss was it that dawn to be alive,

    But to be young was very heaven (T-10, T-10)” – “French Revolution”

 

23. “Europe at that time was thrilled with Joy, France standing on the top of golden hours and human nature seeming born again.” – “Prelude”, Book 6

 

24. “She is in her grave, and, oh

    The difference to me!” – “She dwelt among the untrodden ways”

 

25. “Milton! Thou shouldn’t be living at this hour” – “To Milton (London 1802)”

 

26. “Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart.” – “To Milton”

 

27. “There neither is, nor can be, any essential difference between the language of prose and metrical composition.” (P-2000)

 

28. Wordsworth’s learning, “Verse may build a princely throne on humble truth.”

    – From Robert Burns

 

29. “The child is father of the man;

    I could wish my days to be

    Bound each to each by natural piety.” – *My heart leaps up*

 

30. “The sweetest thing that ever grew beside a human door” – “To Lucy”

 

31. “She gave me eyes, she gave me ears; and humble cares, and delicate fears”

    (The sparrow’s Nest) – “reference to Dorothy by William Wordsworth”

 

32. “Sweet melodies

    Are those that are by distance made more sweet” – (Personal talk)

 

33. “For the Gods approve

    The depth, and not the tumult, of the soul,

    A fervent, not ungovernable love (T-09) – “Laodomia”

 

34. “She was a phantom of Delight”

 

35. “Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge

    It is an immortal as the heart of man”

 

**Books on Wordsworth:**

 

1. John Stuart Mill’s Autobiography (1873)

2. Hazlitt’s lectures on the English poets (1818)

3. Aldous Huxley’s “Wordsworth in the Tropics in Holy Face and other Essays”