100 Selected Poems

One of the greatest poets of the Romantic era, William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was born in Cockermouth, Cumberland, England. The second of five children, Wordsworth’s mother taught him to read and his father, a lawyer, introduced to him the works and verses of Spenser, Milton and Shakespeare. In January 1793, An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches were published by Joseph Johnson. In 1795, Wordsworth met Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey in Bristol. Wordsworth and Coleridge soon became close friends. The two poets together composed a series of verses which were published as a collection titled Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems in 1798. A landmark work in English poetry, it was a prelude to the English romantic movement. Wordsworth had begun working on The Prelude, an autobiographical poem, in 1798. In 1805, he completed it in thirteen books. He continued revising the poem throughout his life. It was published in fourteen books by his wife in 1850, after his death. Dedicating his whole life to poetry, Wordsworth considered himself to be a great poet. He continues to remain alive in the timeless masterpieces of poetry penned by him during his lifetime.