William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was the foremost poet of English romanticism. His most famous work, The Prelude, is considered his crowning achievement, although he also published with poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge a set of Lyrical Ballads in 1789. Wordsworth’s father died at an early age, leaving him and his four siblings orphans. In 1843 Wordsworth became England’s poet laureate, a position he held for the remainder of his life.