This is a magnificently written and deeply absorbing biography of the great poet, for the general reader (i.e. not one too full of deep literary analysis). The author's approach is mostly chronological. This gives a great feeling for the ebb and flow of the poet's literary and personal life, his relationships with others including his wife Mary, sister Dorothy, and the other Lakeland poets Coleridge and Southey, in addition to the evolution of his own political and social views in response to changing external events, his own changing life circumstances, and his reactions to those changes. Combined with the author's obvious love and feeling for the Lake District, which he has apparently visited every summer for 50 years, this made for a wonderful read in the last few days of my holiday there last week and the first few days of my first week back home.
Our understanding of Wordsworth's life and relationships has been enriched by two 20th century literary revelations, that in the 1920s revealing his liaison in 1792 in France with Annette Vallon which produced a daughter Caroline; and that in the 1970s revealing that his marriage with Mary was closer and more passionate as they grew older than we had hitherto believed, Mary's role having been eclipsed in all previous accounts of their lives by the greater influence exerted by his sister Dorothy. His life traces a journey across Cumbria, being born in Cockermouth, partly raised in Penrith and schooled in Hawkshead. After a less than stellar academic career at Cambridge, he basically loafed around for a number of years, including his sojourn in Orleans where he met Annette and was sympathetic to the early French Revolution before the bloody excesses of the Reign of Terror tarnished its original high ideals. He toured in Germany later that decade before eventually settling down back in the Lakes after a brief period in Somerset, with 1798 marking the true beginning of his poetic career with publication of Lyrical Ballads, a collection of his and Coleridge's poems (including the latter's Rime of the Ancient Mariner). This marked the beginning of the Romantic movement in English poetry; in the author's words "The Romantic movement changed the culture of the civilized world, and in the English-speaking countries, Wordsworth is looked upon as its poetic leader". His reputation as such largely survived even as he went through three stages of life, "the radical youth, the solid reactionary middle-aged citizen ..[and] the liberal and mellow old man"; partly, due to the tragically young deaths of the young Romantic pretenders Keats, Shelley and Byron - "In a matter of only three years, the three brightest flames of their generation had perished. For over twenty years, Wordsworth had been virtually on his own, the first and also the last of the Romantic poets." He died in 1850 respected as a national institution, having been Poet Laureate for the previous seven years, and the image of him as a stern, humourless Victorian figure held sway for many years; but there was so much more to him and his life and work than this. An excellent read.
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Top reviews from other countries
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- Dr. A. B. ThomasReviewed in the United Kingdom on February 12, 2020
Readable and informative
- C. StubbsReviewed in the United Kingdom on October 29, 2021
Comprehensive and well-written
