William Wordsworth

Born in Cockermouth, England, on April 7, 1770, William Wordsworth became one of the defining poets of the Romantic movement. He studied at Cambridge, lived through the upheaval of the French Revolution, and formed an important creative partnership with his sister Dorothy Wordsworth, whose journals and companionship shaped much of his work.

In 1798, he and Samuel Taylor Coleridge published Lyrical Ballads, a landmark collection often seen as the beginning of English Romanticism. Wordsworth's poetry turned toward ordinary people, memory, childhood, and the healing power of nature, using clear language to express deep feeling.

He spent much of his life in the Lake District, a landscape closely tied to his imagination and legacy. In 1843 he was named Poet Laureate of Britain, and he remained a major literary figure until his death on April 23, 1850.