Life of William Wordsworth

JOHN WORTHEN is Emeritus Professor, University of Nottingham, UK. His books include The Cambridge Introduction to Samuel Taylor Coleridge (2010), Robert Schumann: Life and Death of a Musician (2007), D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider (2005), The Gang: Coleridge, the Hutchinsons and the Wordsworths in 1802 (2001), and D. H. Lawrence: The Early Years 1885–1912 (1991).

“John Worthen’s engaging new biography of Wordsworth begins by quoting the poet’s recollection of himself at around the age of 10, surveying tall trees, black chasms, and dizzy crags: ‘I loved to stand and & read j Their looks forbidding’, he says, ‘read & disobey’ (p. 3). . . Worthen’s book is a revealing account of the consequences of that daring.”  (The Review of English Studies, 15 October 2014)

• List of Illustrations ixAcknowledgments xAbbreviations and Texts xiiForeword: “The Prelude”: A Poem of My Own Life? xviiPart I Early Years 11 Versions of Home: 1770–83 32 Hawkshead and Esthwaite: 1783–7 183 Cambridge: 1787–90 374 To the Alps: and What Followed: 1790–1 535 Annette Vallon, Michel de Beaupuy, and the Bishop of Llandaff: 1791–3 69Part II Writer 916 Salisbury Plain and its Consequences: 1793–5 937 Racedown: 1795–7 1138 Coleridge and Alfoxton: 1797–8 1359 Lyrical Ballads: 1798 15710 Hamburg to the Harz: 1798 17311 Writing in Goslar: 1798–9 18312 Sockburn to Grasmere: 1799–1800 198Part III Town-End 21313 “Home at Grasmere,” the “Ode,” “Michael”: 1800–1 21514 Hurting: 1800–1 24115 Marrying: 1801–2 24916 Grasmere to Calais and on to Gallow Hill: 1802 26517 Marriage, First Child, and the Trip to Scotland: 1802–3 28418 “The Prelude” I: 1804 30319 “The Prelude” II: 1804–5 31520 “Elegiac Stanzas,” Poems, in Two Volumes: 1806–7 328Part IV The Light of Common Day 34121 “The Recluse” and The Convention of Cintra: 1808–9 34322 Loss and Grief: 1809–12 35623 Stamp-officer and Poet of The Excursion: 1812–14 36824 “What though it be past”: 1814 387Part V Sketches of Late Years 39725 Poetry, Family, and Polemic: 1815–18 39926 Peter Bell and “the ghosts of what they were”: 1819–26 40727 “The Recluse” and “The Prelude”: 1827–33 41828 The Past Enshrined: 1834–42 42929 No Resting Place: 1843–50 439Afterword 447Bibliography 451Index 457