Essential Wordsworth

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) was born in Cockermouth, Cumberland, England, and is one of the founding figures of English Romanticism. With Samuel Taylor Coleridge, he co-authored Lyrical Ballads (1798), whose Preface, advocating a poetry of ordinary language and natural emotion, became the manifesto of English Romantic poetry. His long autobiographical poem The Prelude, composed over much of his adult life and published posthumously in 1850, traces the growth of a poet's consciousness. Other major works include Tintern Abbey, Ode: Intimations of Immortality, and the sonnet The World Is Too Much with Us. He was appointed Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom in 1843.