William Wordsworth

1770–1850 · England

Argued that poetry is 'the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings' recollected in tranquility.

Wordsworth began as a political radical, sympathetic to the French Revolution, and gradually moved toward conservatism as he aged. The trajectory matters because his poetry changes with his politics.

He spent most of his life in the Lake District, walking daily and composing verse in his head. The Prelude, his long autobiographical poem, was revised throughout his life and published posthumously.

Style

Ordinary language — 'the real language of men' — deliberately rejecting the elevated diction of eighteenth-century verse.
The lyric of memory: the experience is often less important than the later replaying of it.
Nature as both subject and teacher, never just background.
Long blank-verse lines in his larger works; tight lyric forms in his shorter poems.