William Wordsworth

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Standard Name: Wordsworth, William
Three-quarter-length painting of William Wordsworth by Benjamin Robert Haydon, 1842, known as "Wordsworth on Helvellyn" (though it was painted in London, with the mountain scene done from memory). Haydon was responding to a poem Wordsworth wrote for him; Elizabeth Barrett (later Browning), alerted by Mary Russell Mitford, wrote a poem about the painting. Wordsworth stands tall, arms folded and gazing downwards, showing his beaky face and bald head framed in remaining white hair and sideburns. National Portr

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Education Meiling Jin
She was saved by the public Children's Library. She read omnivorously, beginning with the Dr Doolittle books (Hugh Lofting ) and fairy stories but missing out on Enid Blyton (who was kept locked away)...
Education Anna Swanwick
At home her mother had read to her daughters, while they sewed, Greek and Roman history, and writers like Pope , and Cowper . At four Anna could recite long passages from Milton 's L'Allegro...
Education Jean Ingelow
In later years she expanded her reading to include Shakespeare , Southey , Scott , Wordsworth , and Tennyson . She also read Henry Drummond 's Natural Law in the Spiritual World and hisTropical Africa and Charles Lamb 's Letters.
Some Recollections of Jean Ingelow and Her Early Friends. Kennikat Press, 1972.
150-1
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
Peters, Maureen. Jean Ingelow: Victorian Poetess. Boydell, 1972.
23
Family and Intimate relationships Frances Cornford
Frances's mother, Ellen Darwin , a great-niece of the poet Wordsworth , was a Fellow and lecturer in English literature at Newnham College .
Raverat, Gwen. Period Piece: A Cambridge Childhood. Faber and Faber, 1977.
192
Cornford, Hugh et al. “Frances Cornford 1886-1960”. Selected Poems, edited by Jane Dowson and Jane Dowson, Enitharmon Press, 1996, p. xxvii - xxxvii.
xxvii
According to Frances's cousin Gwen Darwin , a later...
Family and Intimate relationships Eliza Fletcher
Her daughter Margaret married Dr John Davy , brother of the scientist Sir Humphry Davy .
Gill, Stephen. William Wordsworth. A Life. Clarendon, 1989.
410n58
Her youngest daughter, Mary, who became Lady Richardson , published her mother's autobiography and some letters. Since Margaret...
Family and Intimate relationships Dorothy Wordsworth
DW 's life was radically changed when her brother William married Mary Hutchinson .
Moorman, Mary. William Wordsworth: A Biography. Clarendon Press, 1957–1965, 2 vols.
1: 572-3
Family and Intimate relationships Dorothy Wordsworth
Dorothy's brothers were, in order of age, Richard , William , John , and Christopher . Richard became a lawyer, John a naval officer (who died when the ship he commanded ran aground and sank...
Family and Intimate relationships Anne Ridler
Anne Bradby (later AR ) was still at school when she first met Charles Williams , the poet, Christian apologist, novelist, playwright and essayist, who was a friend of her headmistress, and came to lecture...
Family and Intimate relationships Christabel Coleridge
CC 's father, the Rev. Derwent Coleridge , was a son of Samuel Taylor Coleridge . Derwent published poetry in his youth under the pseudonym Davenant Cecil in the Knight's Quarterly. While his literary...
Family and Intimate relationships Caroline Bowles
They had corresponded since April 1818 when she wrote for literary counsel. In September 1823 she visited Southey at Keswick for several weeks. William Wordsworth (who thought CB a fine poet) acted as her tour...
Family and Intimate relationships Dorothy Wordsworth
From early childhood Dorothy had been especially close to her brother William . When in 1794 she was at last able to live with him, the reunion was emotional and they both felt that their...
Family and Intimate relationships Caroline Bowles
In the summer of 1840 tension between the women of Greta Hall flared and Kate left to stay with the Wordsworth family. At Rydal Mount Wordsworth persuaded Kate to write a 30-page description of her...
Family and Intimate relationships Maria Jane Jewsbury
MJJ became very close to Wordsworth 's daughter Dora ; the relationship, which may have been mutually romantic,
Bloom, Abigail Burnham, editor. Nineteenth-Century British Women Writers. Greenwood Press, 2000.
227
lasted until Jewsbury's death. When her physical and mental health failed, Dora sent her the present...
Family and Intimate relationships Una Troubridge
Sir Henry Taylor , UT 's paternal grandfather, was a poet and playwright whose verses were admired by Wordsworth and whose plays (Victorian melodrama) were performed by the famous actor William Charles Macready . Taylor's...
Family and Intimate relationships Kathleen Raine
KR 's father, George Raine (the son of a coal-miner in County Durham, and a graduate of Durham University), was an English master and housemaster at the County High School in Ilford, a lover of...

Timeline

January 1823: Charles Lamb published the first volume of...

Writing climate item

January 1823

Charles Lamb published the first volume of his Essays of Elia, which had been appearing regularly since August 1820 in the London Magazine.
Lamb, Charles, 1775 - 1834, and Mary, 1764 - 1847 Lamb. The Letters of Charles Lamb. Editor Lucas, Edward Verrall, J. M. Dent, 1935, 3 vols.
2: 560
Burton, Sarah. A Double Life: A Biography of Charles and Mary Lamb. Viking, 2003.
317, 330-1

1825: Alexander Dyce, then a twenty-seven-year-old...

Women writers item

1825

Alexander Dyce , then a twenty-seven-year-old reluctant clergyman, published his Specimens of British Poetesses, a project in rediscovering women's literary history.
Eger, Elizabeth. “Fashioning a Female Canon: Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and the Politics of the Anthology”. Women’s Poetry in the Enlightenment, The Making of a Canon 1730-1820, edited by Isobel Armstrong and Virginia Blain, St Martin’s Press, 1998, pp. 201-15.
210-11
Mitford, Mary Russell. The Life of Mary Russell Mitford: Told by Herself in Letters To Her Friends. Editor L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, Harper and Brothers, 1870, 2 vols.
2: 81
Salzman, Paul. “How Alexander Dyce Assembled Specimens of British Poetesses: A Key Moment in the Transmission of Early Modern Women’s Writing”. Women’s Writing, Vol.
26
, No. 1, Feb. 2019, pp. 88-105.
88-9, 91, 95-6, 97, 98, 101

1830: Nearly a decade after Felicia Hemans's Dartmoor,...

Women writers item

1830

Nearly a decade after Felicia Hemans 's Dartmoor, a poem, Sophie Dixon published at Plymouth two journals, in prose and verse, of excursions around the moor.
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. 18 July 2011, http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
Landry, Donna. “Coleridge’s Boots and Sophie Dixon’s Books: Problems in Construing Literary Evidence for a New Cultural History”. British Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Women Writers Conference, Lawrence, KS, 15 Mar. 2001.

8 September 1836: The Transcendental Club (also known as the...

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8 September 1836

The Transcendental Club (also known as the Hedge Club and the Symposium ) was formed in Cambridge, Massachusetts; it brought together various thinkers who were at the forefront of Transcendentalism.
Geldard, Richard G., editor. The Essential Transcendentalists. Penguin, 2005.
68, 89
The Web of American Transcendentalism. http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/index.html.
Oxford Reference. http://www.oxfordreference.com.

May 1837: Thomas Noon Talfourd, MP for Reading, author,...

Writing climate item

May 1837

Thomas Noon Talfourd , MP for Reading, author, and friend of the literati, began his campaign to extend the length of copyright.
Feather, John. Publishing, Piracy and Politics: An Historical Study of Copyright in Britain. Mansell, 1994.
129

7 September 1838: Grace Darling, twenty-two-year-old daughter...

Building item

7 September 1838

Grace Darling , twenty-two-year-old daughter of the lighthouse-keeper of the Longstone light on the Outer Farne Islands off the Northumbrian coast, helped her father row out in a clumsy boat through heavy seas to rescue...

July 1850: The early version of William Wordsworth's...

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July 1850

The early version of William Wordsworth 's Prelude, written between 1799 and May 1805, was posthumously published.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
Maxwell, James Coutts, and William Wordsworth. “Table of Dates”. The Prelude, Penguin, 1971, pp. 7-15.
8

February 1930: D. B. Wyndham Lewis and Charles Lee published...

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February 1930

D. B. Wyndham Lewis and Charles Lee published The Stuffed Owl: An Anthology of Bad Verse, which includes bad poetry by John Dryden , John Keats , and Elizabeth Barrett Browning along with other canonical figures.
Byatt, A. S. Indexers and Indexes in Fact and Fiction. Editor Bell, Hazel K., University of Toronto, 2001.
110
Lewis, D. B. Wyndham et al. The Stuffed Owl: An Anthology of Bad Verse. 2nd edition, Capricorn, 1962.

10 September 2003: Guardian Unlimited Books named as Site of...

Writing climate item

10 September 2003

Guardian Unlimited Books named as Site of the Week a website entitled Poetry Landmarks of Britain: a map of poetic assocations plotted on an interactive map of Britain, searchable by region or category.
“Poetry Society News: News Archive”. The Poetry Society, London.

Texts

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