Bibliography of william wordsworth the solitary

English Romantic poet (1770–1850)

"Wordsworth" redirects here. For other uses, see Wordsworth (disambiguation).

For the English composer, see William Wordsworth (composer). For the British academic and journalist in India, see William Christopher Wordsworth.

William Wordsworth (7 April 1770 – 23 April 1850) was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads (1798).

Wordsworth's magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude, a semi-autobiographical poem of his early years that he revised and expanded a number of times. It was posthumously titled and published by his wife in the year of his death, before which it was generally known as "The Poem to Coleridge".

Wordsworth was Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death from pleurisy on 23 April 1850. He remains one of the most recognizable names in English poetry and was a key figure of the Romantic poets.

Early life

Family and education

Main article: Early life of William Wordsworth

The second of five children born to John Wordsworth and Ann Cookson, William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 in what is now named Wordsworth House in Cockermouth, Cumberland (now in Cumbria), part of the scenic region in northwestern England known as the Lake District. William's sister, the poet and diarist Dorothy Wordsworth, to whom he was close all his life, was born the following year, and the two were baptised together. They had three other siblings: Richard, the eldest, who became a lawyer; John Wordsworth, born after Dorothy, who went to sea and died in 1805 when the ship of which he was captain, the Earl of Abergavenny, was wrecked off the south coast of England; and Christopher, the youngest, who entered the Church and rose to be Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.

Wordsworth's father was a legal representative of Jam

1807 ballad by William Wordsworth

"The Solitary Reaper" is a lyric poem by English Romantic poet William Wordsworth, and one of his best-known works. The poem was inspired by his and his sister Dorothy's stay at the village of Strathyre in the parish of Balquhidder in Scotland in September 1803.

"The Solitary Reaper" is one of Wordsworth's most famous post-Lyrical Ballads lyrics. The words of the reaper's song are incomprehensible to the speaker, so his attention is free to focus on the tone, expressive beauty and the blissful mood it creates in him. The poem functions to "praise the beauty of music and its fluid expressive beauty", the "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility" that Wordsworth identified at the heart of poetry. The poet orders or requests his listeners to behold a young maiden reaping and singing to herself. The poet says that anyone passing by should either stop or gently pass as not to disturb her. There is a controversy however over the importance of the reaper along with Nature.

It was published in Poems, in Two Volumes in 1807.

Summary

In this poem, the poet (William Wordsworth) tells us about a girl, a Highland lass, who is in a field alone: "single in the field". As she is harvesting her crops, she is singing a maybe sad tune which echoes in the deep valley. The poet is not very sure what the song is about but, because of the tune of the song he can predict the song is sad. The speaker asks us to stop and listen to her tune or "gently pass".

He tells us that no nightingale has sung a welcoming song to wanderers in the deserts. He goes on to say that a cuckoo bird, at its best, during springtime cannot hum a tune better. Her singing is the only sound breaking the silence in the Hebrides, a groups of islands off the coast of Scotland.

The poet has not a clue that, what this song is about

Buy Study Guide

• Rebecca Cantor, author of ClassicNote. Completed on August 09, 2007, copyright held by GradeSaver.
• Updated and revised by Jordan Berkow November 17, 2007. Copyright held by GradeSaver.
• Geoffrey H. Hartman. Wordsworth's Poetry: 1787-1814. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964.
• John L. Mahoney. William Wordsworth: A Poetic Life. New York: Fordham University Press, 1997.
• Russell Noyes. William Wordsworth. New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1971.
• John Williams. William Wordsworth: A Literary Life. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996.
• William Wordsworth. The Major Works. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
• Abrams, M.H., Stephen Greenblatt, Alfred David, et. al. Eds. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York: Norton, 2001.