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80-517: The three main figures of what has become known as the Lakes School were William Wordsworth , Samuel Taylor Coleridge , and Robert Southey . They were associated with several other poets and writers, including Dorothy Wordsworth , Charles Lamb , Mary Lamb , Charles Lloyd , Hartley Coleridge , John Wilson , and Thomas De Quincey . The "Lake Poet School" (or ' Bards of the Lake', or the 'Lake School')

160-481: A Civil List pension of £300 a year. Following the death of Robert Southey in 1843, Wordsworth became Poet Laureate . He initially refused the honour, saying that he was too old, but accepted when the Prime Minister, Robert Peel , assured him that "you shall have nothing required of you". Wordsworth thus became the only poet laureate to write no official verses. The sudden death of his daughter Dora in 1847 at age 42

240-418: A character in works of fiction, including: Isaac Asimov 's 1966 novelisation of the 1966 film Fantastic Voyage sees Dr. Peter Duval quoting Wordsworth's The Prelude as the miniaturised submarine sails through the cerebral fluid surrounding a human brain, comparing it to the "strange seas of thought". Taylor Swift 's 2020 album Folklore mentions Wordsworth in her bonus track " The Lakes ", which

320-577: A couple of times before at Allan Bank , where the Wordsworths lived during 1808–1811, and then at Rydal Mount ( Recollections of the Lake Poets , edited essays, 1834–1840). His worship of Wordsworth turned sour after De Quincey married a local girl and the Wordsworths refused to meet her. Instead, according to Nicholson, he turned more to the local dalesfolk and "he got to know the dalesmen as people, as persons , better than ever Wordsworth did". He reversed

400-406: A few miles above Tintern Abbey " have been a source of critical debate. It was long supposed that Wordsworth relied chiefly on Coleridge for philosophical guidance. However, scholars have recently suggested that Wordsworth's ideas may have been formed years before he and Coleridge became friends in the mid-1790s. In particular, while he was in revolutionary Paris in 1792, the 22-year-old Wordsworth met

480-647: A larger work called The Recluse . In 1804, he began expanding this autobiographical work, having decided to make it a prologue rather than an appendix. He completed this work, now generally referred to as the first version of The Prelude , in 1805, but refused to publish such a personal work until he had completed the whole of The Recluse . The death of his brother John, also in 1805, affected him strongly and may have influenced his decisions about these works. Wordsworth's philosophical allegiances, as articulated in The Prelude and in such shorter works as " Lines written

560-420: A poetic Prospectus to The Recluse in which he laid out the structure and intention of the whole work. The Prospectus contains some of Wordsworth's most famous lines on the relation between the human mind and nature:                       ... my voice proclaims How exquisitely the individual Mind (And

640-509: A rustic, woodland air,    And she was wildly clad; Her eyes were fair, and very fair; -    Her beauty made me glad. “Sisters and brothers, little maid,    How many may you be?” “How many? Seven in all,” she said,    And wondering looked at me. “And where are they? I pray you tell.”    She answered, “Seven are we; And two of us at Conway dwell,    And two are gone to sea; “Two of us in

720-449: A touchstone, and as "the symbol of the nation's covenant with God." Letitia Elizabeth Landon 's sketch, Grasmere Lake, A Sketch by a Cockney , in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1834, is a spoof on the Lake Poets, whom she admired (especially Wordsworth) but regarded as outmoded. In her view the days of Romanticism were over. In John Paterson's Mare , James Hogg 's allegorical satire on

800-607: A verse tragedy set during the reign of King Henry III of England , when Englishmen in the North Country came into conflict with Scottish border reivers . He attempted to get the play staged in November 1797. However, it was rejected by Thomas Harris , the manager of the Covent Garden Theatre , who proclaimed it "impossible that the play should succeed in the representation". The rebuff was not received lightly by Wordsworth, and

880-493: A writer in 1787 when he published a sonnet in The European Magazine . That same year he began attending St John's College, Cambridge . He received his BA degree in 1791. He returned to Hawkshead for the first two summers of his time at Cambridge and often spent later holidays on walking tours , visiting places famous for the beauty of their landscape . In 1790, he went on a walking tour of Europe, during which he toured

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960-494: Is arguable that he "was under the sway of Picturesque theory", he frequently transcended it). His 'vision' of nature was one that did not distort it in order to make art. Wordsworth's early radical political ideas led him to his second poetic characteristic: the use of "plain language" and having for his subject the "common man" as represented by the Dales-folk (rather than "kings and queens, lords and ladies or gods and goddesses" as

1040-626: Is now named Wordsworth House in Cockermouth , Cumberland (now in Cumbria), part of the scenic region in northwestern England known as the Lake District . William's sister, the poet and diarist Dorothy Wordsworth , to whom he was close all his life, was born the following year, and the two were baptised together. They had three other siblings: Richard, the eldest, who became a lawyer; John Wordsworth, born after Dorothy, who went to sea and died in 1805 when

1120-465: Is the last green field    That Lucy's eyes surveyed. Wordsworth, Dorothy, and Coleridge travelled to Germany in the autumn of 1798. While Coleridge was intellectually stimulated by the journey, its main effect on Wordsworth was to produce homesickness. During the harsh winter of 1798–99, Wordsworth lived with Dorothy in Goslar , and, despite extreme stress and loneliness, began work on

1200-574: Is thought to be about the Lake District . In April 2020, the Royal Mail issued a series of postage stamps to mark the 250th anniversary of the birth of Wordsworth. Ten 1st class stamps were issued featuring Wordsworth and all the major British Romantic poets, including William Blake , John Keats , Lord Byron , Samuel Taylor Coleridge , Percy Bysshe Shelley and Walter Scott . Each stamp included an extract from one of their most popular and enduring works, with Wordsworth's " The Rainbow " selected for

1280-502: The Alps extensively and visited nearby areas of France, Switzerland, and Italy. In November 1791, Wordsworth visited Revolutionary France and became enchanted with the Republican movement. He fell in love with a French woman, Annette Vallon, who, in 1792, gave birth to their daughter Caroline. Financial problems and Britain 's tense relations with France forced him to return to England alone

1360-601: The Edinburgh publishing scene first published in the Newcastle Magazine in 1825, the Lake Poets feature as 'a whole covey of sandpipers or water larks'. The second generation of Romantic poets were drawn to the area by the Romantic vision of seclusion and by the perceived republican views of the older poets, but found a different reality when they arrived. Shelley lived for three months in 1811 at Keswick, having been drawn to

1440-527: The Peace of Amiens again allowing travel to France, in 1802, Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy visited Annette and Caroline in Calais . The purpose of the visit was to prepare Annette for the fact of his forthcoming marriage to Mary Hutchinson. Afterwards, he wrote the sonnet " It is a beauteous evening, calm and free ", recalling a seaside walk with the nine-year-old Caroline, whom he had never seen before that visit. Mary

1520-635: The Rhineland together. Dorothy suffered from a severe illness in 1829 that rendered her an invalid for the remainder of her life. Coleridge and Charles Lamb both died in 1834, their loss being a difficult blow to Wordsworth. The following year saw the passing of James Hogg . Despite the death of many contemporaries, the popularity of his poetry ensured a steady stream of young friends and admirers to replace those he lost. Wordsworth's youthful political radicalism, unlike Coleridge's, never led him to rebel against his religious upbringing. He remarked in 1812 that he

1600-508: The University of Durham . The following year he was awarded the same honorary degree by the University of Oxford, when John Keble praised him as the "poet of humanity", praise greatly appreciated by Wordsworth. (It has been argued that Wordsworth was a significant influence on Keble's immensely popular book of devotional poetry, The Christian Year (1827). ) In 1842, the government awarded him

1680-513: The 'Picturesque Figure', 'for in him are combined its three main phases - the aesthetic, the scientific and the moral ...' His scientific approach to the rocks and water of the Lakes, Nicholson argues, was an attempt, not to understand his subject, but to teach people how to react to it in a 'practical and moral' way. William Wordsworth This is an accepted version of this page William Wordsworth (7 April 1770 – 23 April 1850)

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1760-612: The 18th century (cf. Oxford English Dictionary 'picturesque') before being described by Bagehot in Literary Studies (1879) as "a quality distinct from that of beauty, or sublimity, or grandeur." For Price, the Picturesque was more specifically defined as being located between the Beautiful and the Sublime . In practical application this meant that his preferred mode of landscaping

1840-513: The Ancient Mariner ". The second edition, published in 1800, had only Wordsworth listed as the author and included a preface to the poems. It was augmented significantly in the next edition, published in 1802. In this preface, which some scholars consider a central work of Romantic literary theory, Wordsworth discusses what he sees as the elements of a new type of verse, one that is based on the ordinary language "really used by men" while avoiding

1920-564: The Hon. Sarah Barrington, daughter of John Shute Barrington, 1st Viscount Barrington . Educated at Eton and at Christ Church, Oxford , Price inherited the family estate of Foxley (in Yazor in Herefordshire ) when he came of age in 1768, a few years after the death of his father in 1761 and of his grandfather ( Uvedale Tomkins Price ) in 1764. As a young man Price was a figure on London's social scene, and

2000-620: The Lake District, nor was he the one who popularised it the most, he "was destined to become one of the key attractions to the area, while his particular vision of his native landscape would have an enduring influence upon its future". Not just a 'nature poet', his poetry "is about the organic relationship between human beings and the natural world...' After a brief flirtation with the Picturesque in his Cambridge years, he came to see this aesthetic view of nature as being only one of many (although it

2080-508: The Lake District. This was the immediate cause of the brother and sister's settling at Dove Cottage in Grasmere in the Lake District, this time with another poet, Robert Southey , nearby. Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey came to be known as the " Lake Poets ". Throughout this period, many of Wordsworth's poems revolved around themes of death, endurance, separation and grief. In 1802, Lowther's heir, William Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale , paid

2160-540: The Lakes , tellingly subtitled "for the Use of Tourists and Residents", and with a Section Three entitled "Changes, and Rules of Taste for Preventing their Bad Effects." Nicholson argues that the Guide was the outcome of the loss of Wordsworth's poetic vision of nature and a turning outwards into hard facts in order to preserve his sanity after "years, perhaps, of disillusion, disappointment, of spiritual impotence..." Another aspect of it

2240-431: The Lakes by reading the early, "liberty and equality" Southey, only to find that Southey's views had changed and that the Lakes had been despoiled by "the manufacturers". Keats , in the summer of 1818, had a similar response to that of Shelley, finding his hero Wordsworth's house full of fashionable people and Wordsworth himself away canvassing for the local Tory candidate. Keats moved on to Scotland which provided him with

2320-514: The Lakes seem to offer in poetic terms." For Wordsworth, who settled at Dove Cottage , Grasmere , with his sister Dorothy after some years of wandering, the Lakes became bound up with his identity as a poet. Born and brought up on the fringes of the Lake District (at Cockermouth and Penrith ), Wordsworth came back to the area in December 1799 and settled into a 'poetic retirement' within his 'native mountains.' Although Wordsworth did not 'discover'

2400-522: The Pastor, who dominates the last third of the poem. Behler has pointed out the fact that Wordsworth wanted to invoke the basic feeling that a human heart possesses and expresses. He had reversed the philosophical standpoint expressed by his friend S. T. Coleridge , of 'creating the characters in such an environment so that the public feels them belonging to the distant place and time'. And this philosophical realisation by Wordsworth indeed allowed him to choose

2480-660: The autobiographical piece that was later titled The Prelude . He wrote several other famous poems in Goslar, including " The Lucy poems ". In the Autumn of 1799, Wordsworth and his sister returned to England and visited the Hutchinson family at Sockburn. When Coleridge arrived back in England, he travelled to the North with their publisher, Joseph Cottle, to meet Wordsworth and undertake a proposed tour of

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2560-456: The central 'Lake Poet' (he lived at Greta Hall from 1803 to 1843), was mostly a prose writer and did not particularly subscribe to the Wordsworthian vision of the Lakes. Southey, like Wordsworth, started out on the republican left, but, by the time the threat from Napoleon had dwindled, he had become the embodiment of a Tory extolling the virtues of nation and patriotism, and using the Lakes as

2640-570: The churchyard lie,    My sister and my brother; And, in the churchyard cottage, I    Dwell near them with my mother.” “My stockings there I often knit;    My kerchief there I hem; And there upon the ground I sit,    And sing a song to them. “And often after sunset, sir,    When it is light and fair, I take my little porringer,    And eat my supper there. “How many are you, then,” said I,    “If they two are in heaven?” Quick

2720-566: The collections An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches . In 1795, he received a legacy of £900 from Raisley Calvert and was able to pursue a career as a poet. It was also in 1795 that he met Samuel Taylor Coleridge in Somerset. The two poets quickly developed a close friendship. For two years from 1795, William and his sister Dorothy lived at Racedown House in Dorset—a property of the Pinney family—to

2800-431: The couple and grew close to Mary. The following year, Mary gave birth to the first of five children, three of whom predeceased her and William: Wordsworth had for years been making plans to write a long philosophical poem in three parts, which he intended to call The Recluse . In 1798–99 he started an autobiographical poem, which he referred to as the " poem to Coleridge " and which he planned would serve as an appendix to

2880-463: The effects on (especially poor) people's way of life of social change (for example, due to the enclosure movement) that were taking place. He disliked change that flew in the face of Nature: the planting of regimented lines of Larches; the coming of the railways; new building that did not chime with the vernacular ; and the building of grand houses in the Lakes by the industrialists of Lancashire particularly upset him. In 1810 he published his Guide to

2960-861: The festivals around Easter, May Day and Shrove Tuesday . Wordsworth was taught both the Bible and the Spectator , but little else. At the school in Penrith, he met the Hutchinsons, including Mary Hutchinson, who later became his wife. After the death of Wordsworth's mother, in 1778, his father sent him to Hawkshead Grammar School in Lancashire (now in Cumbria ) and sent Dorothy to live with relatives in Yorkshire . She and William did not meet again for nine years. Wordsworth debuted as

3040-498: The following year. The circumstances of his return and subsequent behaviour raised doubts about his declared wish to marry Annette. However, he supported her and his daughter as best he could in later life. The Reign of Terror left Wordsworth thoroughly disillusioned with the French Revolution, and the outbreak of armed hostilities between Britain and France prevented him from seeing Annette and his daughter for some years. With

3120-541: The human mind. In response to Wordsworth's poetic program that, “when we look / Into our Minds, into the Mind of Man- / My haunt, and the main region of my song” ( The Excursion ), William Blake wrote to his friend Henry Crabb Robinson that the passage " caused him a bowel complaint which nearly killed him”. Following the death of his friend, the painter William Green in 1823, Wordsworth also mended his relations with Coleridge. The two were fully reconciled by 1828 when they toured

3200-421: The identical emotion that the poet and his sister nourish: "We leave you here in solitude to dwell/ With these our latest gifts of tender thought; Thou, like the morning, in thy saffron coat,/ Bright gowan, and marsh-marigold, farewell!" (L.19–22). This kind of conversational tone persists throughout the poet's poetic journey, which positions him as a man in society who speaks to the purpose of communion with

3280-410: The inspiration he sought (and where, in particular, he felt the influence of Robert Burns ). Byron did not visit the Lakes, but he ridiculed the isolation and narrowness of mind of the older Lake Poets, as well as of their abandonment of radical politics. The hale and hearty John Wilson provided an alternative take on the role of Lake Poet. He lived near Windermere between 1808 and 1815 and knew

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3360-455: The labouring-class and slightly later John Close , who catered particularly to the growing tourist trade. Other poets include James Payn , Margaret Cropper , and Norman Nicholson . In 1871, aged 48, having visited the Lakes many times, John Ruskin decided to settle down in Brantwood , a house overlooking Coniston Water . Worn out in body and mind, he was looking for a restful escape, and it

3440-421: The language and structural patterning of the poetry that a common person used every day. Kurland wrote that the conversational aspect of a language emerges through social necessity. Social necessity posits the theme of possessing the proper knowledge, interest and biases also among the speakers. William Wordsworth has used conversation in his poetry to let the poet 'I' merge into 'We'. The poem "Farewell" exposes

3520-444: The mid-1810s, perhaps because most of the concerns that characterised his early poems (loss, death, endurance, separation and abandonment) had been resolved in his writings and his life. By 1820, he was enjoying considerable success accompanying a reversal in the contemporary critical opinion of his earlier works. The poet and artist William Blake, who knew Wordsworth's work, was struck by Wordsworth's boldness in centring his poetry on

3600-711: The mysterious traveller John "Walking" Stewart (1747–1822), who was nearing the end of his thirty years of wandering, on foot, from Madras , India, through Persia and Arabia , across Africa and Europe, and up through the fledgling United States. By the time of their association, Stewart had published an ambitious work of original materialist philosophy entitled The Apocalypse of Nature (London, 1791), to which many of Wordsworth's philosophical sentiments may well be indebted. In 1807, Wordsworth published Poems, in Two Volumes , including " Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood ". Until now, Wordsworth

3680-469: The need for the Lakes to be connected more with the outside world (for example, she was in favour of improved sanitation and of the new railways being set up through the district, unlike her friend Wordsworth). Her guide to the Lakes ( Complete guide to the Lakes , 1855) was a rather factual and clear-eyed description about what to find there and about the condition of the people. De Quincey moved into Dove Cottage in 1809 after having met his hero Wordsworth

3760-438: The older Lake Poet trio well. His poetry ( Isle of Palms ) reveals a physical response to the Lakes scenery (he was an energetic walker and climber), and emphasises companionship and energy as against Wordsworthian quiet and solitude. Wilson knew both Harriet Martineau and Thomas De Quincey . Martineau settled in a house she had built near Ambleside in 1845. As befitted her sociology -based background, her views concentrated on

3840-576: The pair moved to Alfoxton House , Somerset, just a few miles away from Coleridge's home in Nether Stowey . Together Wordsworth and Coleridge (with insights from Dorothy) produced Lyrical Ballads (1798), an important work in the English Romantic movement . The volume gave neither Wordsworth's nor Coleridge's name as author. One of Wordsworth's most famous poems, " Tintern Abbey ", was published in this collection, along with Coleridge's " The Rime of

3920-709: The play was not published until 1842, after substantial revisions. I travelled among unknown men I travelled among unknown men,    In lands beyond the sea; Nor, England! did I know till then    What love I bore to thee. 'T is past, that melancholy dream!    Nor will I quit thy shore A second time, for still I seem    To love thee more and more. Among thy mountains did I feel    The joy of my desire; And she I cherished turned her wheel    Beside an English fire. Thy mornings showed, thy nights concealed,    The bowers where Lucy played; And thine too

4000-636: The poem Christabel , partly written at Greta Hall , for the Lyrical Ballads collection, added to Coleridge's depression over his personal life, his doubts about being able to write as he would have wished and his ill-health which was made worse by the Cumbrian climate. This led him to resort to the Kendal Black Drop , making matters desperate. Coleridge moved out of the area in 1804. Robert Southey , it has been argued, although becoming identified as

4080-521: The poet. [REDACTED] Category Uvedale Price Sir Uvedale Price, 1st Baronet (baptised 14 April 1747 – 14 September 1829), author of the Essay on the Picturesque, As Compared with the Sublime and The Beautiful (1794), was a Herefordshire landowner who was at the heart of the ' Picturesque debate' of the 1790s. Uvedale Price was the eldest son of Robert Price , an amateur artist, by his wife

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4160-411: The poetic diction of much 18th-century verse. Wordsworth also gives his famous definition of poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility", and calls his own poems in the book "experimental". A fourth and final edition of Lyrical Ballads was published in 1805. Between 1795 and 1797, Wordsworth wrote his only play, The Borderers ,

4240-411: The practice of the Picturesque – instead of using the imagination to transform (and distort) the real, external world, he used the external world of the Lakes to feed his dreams and imagination. The beauty of the Lake District has also inspired many other writers over the years, beyond the core Lake Poets. These include their contemporaries Bryan Procter , Felicia Hemans , and Walter Scott , as well as

4320-401: The progressive powers perhaps no less Of the whole species) to the external World Is fitted:—and how exquisitely, too— Theme this but little heard of among Men, The external World is fitted to the Mind; And the creation (by no lower name Can it be called) which they with blended might Accomplish ... Some modern critics suggest that there was a decline in his work beginning around

4400-450: The region's pull was more uncertain. Coleridge followed Wordsworth to the Lakes and moved into Greta Hall in 1800. Although identified by his contemporaries as a 'Lake Poet', Coleridge's response to the landscape was at variance with the vision of Wordsworth, leading Coleridge to identify the landscape's "Gothic elements"..."and in so doing seems to recognise a potential for psychological horror rather than solace." Wordsworth's rejection of

4480-525: The ship of which he was captain, the Earl of Abergavenny , was wrecked off the south coast of England; and Christopher , the youngest, who entered the Church and rose to be Master of Trinity College, Cambridge . Wordsworth's father was a legal representative of James Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale and, through his connections, lived in a large mansion in the small town. He was frequently away from home on business, so

4560-444: The stipend of £400 a year made him financially secure, albeit at the cost of political independence. In 1813, he and his family, including Dorothy, moved to Rydal Mount , Ambleside (between Grasmere and Rydal Water), where he spent the rest of his life. In 1814, Wordsworth published The Excursion as the second part of the three-part work The Recluse even though he never completed the first or third parts. He did, however, write

4640-420: The time, it has since come to be widely recognised as his masterpiece. Margaret Louisa Woods portrayed the young Wordsworth in her novel A Poet's Youth (1923). Ken Russell 's 1978 film William and Dorothy portrays the relationship between William and his sister Dorothy. Wordsworth and Coleridge's friendship is examined by Julien Temple in his 2000 film Pandaemonium . Wordsworth has appeared as

4720-816: The very common mass of that society. Again; "Preface to Lyrical Ballads" [1] is the evidence where the poet expresses why he is writing and what he is writing and what purpose it will serve humanity. Wordsworth remained a formidable presence in his later years. In 1837, the Scottish poet and playwright Joanna Baillie reflected on her long acquaintance with Wordsworth. "He looks like a man that one must not speak to unless one has some sensible thing to say. However, he does occasionally converse cheerfully & well, and when one knows how benevolent & excellent he is, it disposes one to be very much pleased with him." In 1838, Wordsworth received an honorary doctorate in Civil Law from

4800-420: The very thing that made the Lakes special (although he himself ended up writing one of the best guides to the region). In addition, many of the first and second generation practitioners of Romantic poetry had a complex and not entirely easy relationship with the Lakes (apart from Wordsworth). "For the most part other Romantic poets either struggle with a Lake Poet identity or come to define themselves against what

4880-440: The west of Pilsdon Pen . They walked in the area for about two hours daily, and the nearby hills consoled Dorothy as she pined for the fells of her native Lakeland. She wrote, "We have hills which, seen from a distance, almost take the character of mountains, some cultivated nearly to their summits, others in their wild state covered with furze and broom. These delight me the most as they remind me of our native wilds." In 1797,

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4960-460: The year of his death, before which it was generally known as "The Poem to Coleridge". Wordsworth was Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death from pleurisy on 23 April 1850. He remains one of the most recognizable names in English poetry and was a key figure of the Romantic poets. The second of five children born to John Wordsworth and Ann Cookson, William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 in what

5040-484: The young William and his siblings had little involvement with him and remained distant until he died in 1783. However, he did encourage William in his reading, and in particular, set him to commit large portions of verse to memory, including works by Milton , Shakespeare and Spenser which William would pore over in his father's library. William also spent time at his mother's parents' house in Penrith , Cumberland, where he

5120-411: The £4,000 (equivalent to £451,114 in 2023) owed to Wordsworth's father through Lowther's failure to pay his aide. It was this repayment that afforded Wordsworth the financial means to marry. On 4 October, following his visit with Dorothy to France to arrange matters with Annette, Wordsworth married his childhood friend, Mary Hutchinson, at All Saints' Church, Brompton . Dorothy continued to live with

5200-517: Was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge , helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads (1798). Wordsworth's magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude , a semi-autobiographical poem of his early years that he revised and expanded a number of times. It was posthumously titled and published by his wife in

5280-427: Was an auxiliary member who was unpublished during her lifetime (her journals, letters, and poems were published posthumously), but she provided much of the inspiration for her brother William's work. There was a certain amount of additional irony involved in the 'School's' perception by readers, who were inspired, upon reading the poetry, to visit the area, thus helping to destroy, in the mind of Wordsworth at least,

5360-458: Was anxious that Wordsworth should do more for Caroline. Upon Caroline's marriage, in 1816, Wordsworth settled £30 a year on her (equivalent to £2,400 in 2021), payments which continued until 1835, when they were replaced by a capital settlement. We Are Seven I met a little cottage girl:    She was eight years old, she said; Her hair was thick with many a curl    That clustered round her head. She had

5440-622: Was created a baronet on 12 February 1828. During his life, Price was befriended by Sir George Beaumont and his wife Margaret Beaumont , with whom he corresponded extensively. He was also a lifetime friend of the statesman Charles James Fox as well as being acquainted with William Wordsworth , and in later life, a correspondent of Elizabeth Barrett Browning . He died in 1829 aged 82, having finally printed his work on Greek and Latin pronunciation. His only son Robert succeeded as 2nd (and last) baronet. Price developed his ideas with his close neighbour Richard Payne Knight , whose poem 'The Landscape'

5520-433: Was difficult for the ageing poet to take, and in his depression, he ultimately gave up writing new material. William Wordsworth died at home at Rydal Mount from an aggravated case of pleurisy on 23 April 1850, and was buried at St Oswald's Church, Grasmere . His widow, Mary, published his lengthy autobiographical "Poem to Coleridge" as The Prelude several months after his death. Though it failed to interest people at

5600-568: Was exposed to the moors but did not get along with his grandparents or uncle, who also lived there. His hostile interactions with them distressed him to the point of contemplating suicide. Wordsworth was taught to read by his mother, and he first attended a tiny school of low quality in Cockermouth, then a school in Penrith for the children of upper-class families. He was taught there by Ann Birkett, who instilled in her students traditions that included pursuing scholarly and local activities, especially

5680-470: Was initially a derogatory term ("the School of whining and hypochondriacal poets that haunt the Lakes", according to Francis Jeffrey as reported by Coleridge) that was also a misnomer, as it was neither particularly born out of the Lake District, nor was it a cohesive school of poetry. The principal members of the 'group' were William Wordsworth , Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey . Dorothy Wordsworth

5760-409: Was known only for Lyrical Ballads , and he hoped this new collection would cement his reputation. Its reception was lukewarm. In 1810, Wordsworth and Coleridge were estranged over the latter's opium addiction, and in 1812, his son Thomas died at the age of 6, six months after the death of 3-year-old Catherine. The following year, he received an appointment as Distributor of Stamps for Westmorland, and

5840-472: Was once described as the " macaroni of his age," but with his inheritance and his marriage to Lady Caroline Carpenter, youngest daughter of George Carpenter, 1st Earl of Tyrconnel , he settled down at Foxley to tend to the estate and develop his theories on landscape, as well as equally controversial work on the pronunciation of the Classical languages . He served as High Sheriff of Herefordshire in 1793, and

5920-445: Was published the same year as Price's Essay delineating his theories on "The Picturesque" as a mode of landscape. Well before Price's Essay or Knight's poem, however, the term pittoresque was used in early 18th century France to refer to a property of being "in the style of a painter". Pope, in his "Letter to Caryll", brought the word into English as " picturesque " in 1712. The term was used by various English authors throughout

6000-406: Was the case up to then). A third notable feature of his work was to do with the inward-turning of his mind, producing a semi-autobiographical take on nature and imagination: his poem The Prelude , he wrote to Dorothy, was "the poem on the growth of my own mind." Despite this reclusive side of his personality, Wordsworth was a strong believer in family and community, and he was much concerned with

6080-429: Was the link to the ideas of Uvedale Price , whom Wordsworth knew and who proposed a "conservative, historicising and non-interventionist aesthetic". The Guide ran to five editions during Wordsworth's lifetime and proved to be very popular. Indeed, it has been said that "the architectural axioms of building and gardening in the Lake District for the next hundred years were established by the Guide ". For other writers,

6160-408: Was the little maid’s reply:    “O Master! we are seven.” “But they are dead; those two are dead!    Their spirits are in heaven!” - ’T was throwing words away; for still The little maid would have her will,    And said, “Nay, we are seven!” From the "We Are Seven" poem The year 1793 saw the first publication of poems by Wordsworth in

6240-532: Was this 'weariness and despair' that caught the sympathy of the Lake visitors. They, too, turned to the Lakes for comfort and rest,' rather than for the 'stimulus and excitement that had been the joy of the early travellers.' Ruskin, although he wrote little about the area, ended up taking on the mantle of Wordsworth as the 'new Sage of the Lakes, the Picturesque Figure, the Old Man of Coniston.' Nicholson saw him as

6320-572: Was to retain old trees, rutted paths, and textured slopes, rather than to sweep all these away in the style that had been practised by Lancelot "Capability" Brown . Price contested, for example, the obsession of "The Beautiful" with Classical and natural symmetry , arguing instead for a less formal and more asymmetrical interpretation of nature . Price's ideas led to much debate in artistic and literary circles: they were parodied, for example, by Jane Austen in Northanger Abbey . Price republished

6400-564: Was willing to shed his blood for the established Church of England , reflected in his Ecclesiastical Sketches of 1822. This religious conservatism also colours The Excursion (1814), a long poem that became extremely popular during the nineteenth century. It features three central characters: the Wanderer, the Solitary, who has experienced the hopes and miseries of the French Revolution , and

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