Description
John Wiley and Sons Ltd The Life Of William Wordsworth (Hb 2014) by John Worthen
By examining the family and financial circumstances of Wordsworth s early years, this illuminating biography reshapes our understanding of the great Romantic poet s most creative period of life and writing. Features new research into Wordsworth s financial situation, and into how the poet and his family survived financially. Offers a new understanding of the role of his great unwritten poem The Recluse. Presents a new assessment of the relationship between Wordsworth and Coleridge Table of contents : List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments x Abbreviations and Texts xii Foreword: The Prelude : A Poem of My Own Life? xvii Part I Early Years 1 1 Versions of Home: 1770 83 3 2 Hawkshead and Esthwaite: 1783 7 18 3 Cambridge: 1787 90 37 4 To the Alps: and What Followed: 1790 1 53 5 Annette Vallon, Michel de Beaupuy, and the Bishop of Llandaff: 1791 3 69 Part II Writer 91 6 Salisbury Plain and its Consequences: 1793 5 93 7 Racedown: 1795 7 113 8 Coleridge and Alfoxton: 1797 8 135 9 Lyrical Ballads: 1798 157 10 Hamburg to the Harz: 1798 173 11 Writing in Goslar: 1798 9 183 12 Sockburn to Grasmere: 1799 1800 198 Part III Town-End 213 13 Home at Grasmere, the Ode, Michael : 1800 1 215 14 Hurting: 1800 1 241 15 Marrying: 1801 2 249 16 Grasmere to Calais and on to Gallow Hill: 1802 265 17 Marriage, First Child, and the Trip to Scotland: 1802 3 284 18 The Prelude I: 1804 303 19 The Prelude II: 1804 5 315 20 Elegiac Stanzas, Poems, in Two Volumes : 1806 7 328 Part IV The Light of Common Day 341 21 The Recluse and The Convention of Cintra: 1808 9 343 22 Loss and Grief: 1809 12 356 23 Stamp-officer and Poet of The Excursion: 1812 14 368 24 What though it be past : 1814 387 Part V Sketches of Late Years 397 25 Poetry, Family, and Polemic: 1815 18 399 26 Peter Bell and the ghosts of what they were : 1819 26 407 27 The Recluse and The Prelude : 1827 33 418 28 The Past Enshrined: 1834 42 429 29 No Resting Place: 1843 50 439 Afterword 447 Bibliography 451 Index 457