The Life of William Wordsworth (eBook)

A Critical Biography

John Worthen (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2014
John Wiley & Sons (Verlag)
978-1-118-60492-2 (ISBN)

Infos

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

John Worthen is Emeritus Professor, University of Nottingham. His books include D. H. Lawrence: The Early Years 1885-1912 (1991), The Gang: Coleridge, the Hutchinsons & the Wordsworths in 1802 (2001), D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider (2005), Robert Schumann: Life and Death of a Musician (2007), and The Cambridge Introduction to Samuel Taylor Coleridge (2010).

Autor

JOHN WORTHEN is Emeritus Professor, University of Nottingham, UK. His books include The Cambridge Introduction to Samuel Taylor Coleridge (2010), Robert Schumann: Life and Death of a Musician (2007), D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider (2005), The Gang: Coleridge, the Hutchinsons and the Wordsworths in 1802 (2001), and D. H. Lawrence: The Early Years 1885-1912 (1991).

Inhalt

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

Rezensionen

"John Worthen's engaging new biography of Wordsworth
begins by quoting the poet's recollection of himself at
around the age of 10, surveying tall trees, black chasms, and dizzy
crags: 'I loved to stand and & read j Their looks
forbidding', he says, 'read & disobey' (p.
3). . . Worthen's book is a revealing account of the
consequences of that daring." (The Review of English
Studies, 15 October 2014)

"This is an original and richly informed life of the great poet,
both sympathetic and sceptical. John Worthen has brought a fresh
pair of eyes to many aspects of Wordsworth's biography, and the
result is a vivid and persuasive account of a remarkable
personality."

--Seamus Perry, University of Oxford

Textauszug

Abbreviations and Texts

Editions of Wordsworth

BW	Benjamin the Waggoner, ed. Paul F. Betz (Ithaca, 1981)

Borderers

The Borderers, ed. Robert Osborn (Ithaca, 1982)

DS	Descriptive Sketches, ed. Eric Birdsall (Ithaca, 1984) The Earliest Poems, 1785–1790, ed. Duncan Wu (Manchester, 2002)

EPF	Early Poems and Fragments, 1785–1797, ed. Carol Landon and Jared Curtis (Ithaca, 1998)

EW	An Evening Walk, ed. James Averill (Ithaca, 1984)

Excursion

The Excursion (1814), ed. Sally Bushell, James A. Butler, and Michael C. Jaye (Ithaca, 2007)

FN	The Fenwick Notes of William Wordsworth, ed. Jared Curtis (Bristol, 1993)

HG	Home at Grasmere, Part First, Book First, of The Recluse, ed. Beth Darlington (Ithaca, 1977)

LB	Lyrical Ballads, and Other Poems, 1797–1800, ed. James A. Butler and Karen Green (Ithaca, 1992)

LB ESE

Lyrical Ballads: An Electronic Scholarly Edition, ed. Bruce Graver and Ron Tetreault (Romantic Circles, University of Maryland, n.d.): http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/LB/readtxts.html

LP	Last Poems, 1821–1850, ed. Jared Curtis, with associate editors Apryl Lea Denny-Ferris and Jillian Heydt-Stevenson (Ithaca, 1999)

PB	Peter Bell, ed. John E. Jordan (Ithaca, 1985)

P2V	Poems, in Two Volumes, and Other Poems, 1800–1807, ed. Jared Curtis (Ithaca, 1983) The Prelude 1799, 1805, 1850, ed. Jonathan Wordsworth, M. H. Abrams, and Stephen Gill (New York and London, 1979) The Five-Book Prelude, ed. Duncan Wu (Oxford, 1997)

RCP	The Ruined Cottage and The Pedlar, ed. James Butler (Ithaca, 1979)

Salisbury

The Salisbury Plain Poems, ed. Stephen Gill (Ithaca, 1975)

SP	Shorter Poems, 1807–1820, ed. Carl H. Ketcham (Ithaca, 1989)

SSIP	Sonnet Series and Itinerary Poems, 1819–1850, ed. Geoffrey Jackson (Ithaca, 2004) Translations of Chaucer and Virgil, ed. Bruce E. Graver (Ithaca, 1998)

Tuft	The Tuft of Primroses, with Other Poems for The Recluse, ed. Joseph F. Kishel (Ithaca, 1986) The White Doe of Rylstone; or The Fate of the Nortons, ed. Kristine Dugas (Ithaca, 1988)

WL i.

The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth: Second Edition, I: The Early Years, 1785–1805, ed. Ernest de Selincourt, rev. Chester L. Shaver (Oxford, 1967)

WL ii.

The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth: Second Edition, II: The Middle Years, Part I, 1806–1811, ed. Ernest de Selincourt, rev. Mary Moorman (Oxford, 1969)

WL iii.

The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth: Second Edition, III: The Middle Years, Part II, 1812–1820, ed. Ernest de Selincourt, rev. Mary Moorman and Alan G. Hill (Oxford, 1970)

WL iv.

The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth: Second Edition, III [sic]: The Later Years, Part I, 1821–1828, ed. Ernest de Selincourt, rev. and ed. Alan G. Hill (Oxford, 1978)

WL v.

The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth: Second Edition, V: The Later Years, Part II, 1829–1834, ed. Ernest de Selincourt, rev. and ed. Alan G. Hill (Oxford, 1979)

WL vi.

The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth: Second Edition, VI: The Later Years, Part III, 1835–1839, ed. Ernest de Selincourt, rev. and ed. Alan G. Hill (Oxford, 1982)

WL vii.

The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth: Second Edition, VII: The Later Years, Part IV, 1840–1853, ed. Ernest de Selincourt, rev. and ed. Alan G. Hill (Oxford, 1988)

WL viii.

The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth: VIII: A Supplement of New Letters, ed. Alan G. Hill (Oxford, 2000) The Love Letters of William and Mary Wordsworth, ed. Beth Darlington (Ithaca, 1981)

WP	The Prose Works of William Wordsworth, ed. W. J. B. Owen and Jane Worthington Smyser, 3 Vols. (Oxford, 1974) Wordsworth's Pocket Notebook, ed. George Harris Healey (Ithaca, 1942)

1799	The Prelude, 1798–1799, ed. Stephen Parrish (Ithaca, 1977)

1805	The Thirteen-Book Prelude, ed. Mark L. Reed, 2 Vols. (Ithaca, 1991)

1850	The Fourteen-Book Prelude, ed. W. J. B. Owen (Ithaca, 1985)

Biographical and Scholarly Material

Barker

Juliet Barker, Wordsworth: A Life (New York and London, 2000)

CBL	Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, ed. James Engell and W. Jackson Bate, 2 Vols. (London and Princeton, 1983)

CL	Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Earl Leslie Griggs, 6 Vols. (Oxford and New York, 1956–71)

CN	The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Kathleen Coburn et al., 5 Vols. (New York, Princeton, and London, 1957–2002)

CPI	Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Poetical Works I, ed. J. C. C. Mays, 2 Vols. (London and Princeton, 2001)

CPII	Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Poetical Works II, ed. J. C. C. Mays, 2 Vols. (London and Princeton, 2001)

DCMS	Dove Cottage MS in the Wordsworth Library, Jerwood Centre, Grasmere

D/LONS

Archive of the Lowther Family, Cumbria Record Office, Carlisle

De Quincey

Thomas De Quincey, Recollections of the Lakes and the Lake Poets, ed. David Wright (Harmondsworth, 1970)

DWJ	Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, ed. Ernest de Selincourt, 2 Vols. (1941)

GAJ	Dorothy Wordsworth, The Grasmere and Alfoxden Journals, ed. Pamela Woof (Oxford, 2002)

Gang	John Worthen, The Gang: Coleridge, the Hutchinsons and the Wordsworths in 1802 (2001)

Gill	Stephen Gill, William Wordsworth: A Life (Oxford, 1989)

Johnston

Kenneth R. Johnston, The Hidden Wordsworth: Poet, Lover, Rebel, Spy (New York and London, 1998)

JWL	The Letters of John Wordsworth, ed. Carl H. Ketcham (Ithaca, 1969) Letters of Dora Wordsworth, ed. Howard P. Vincent (Chicago, 1944)

Legouis

Emile Legouis, William Wordsworth and Annette Vallon, ed. Pierre Legouis, revised edn. (Hamden, CT, 1967)

Memoirs

Christopher Wordsworth, Memoirs of William Wordsworth, 2 Vols. (1851)

Moorman i.

Mary Moorman, William Wordsworth: A Biography: The Early Years 1770–1803 (1957)

Moorman ii.

Mary Moorman, William Wordsworth: A Biography: The Late Years 1803–1850 (1965)

MWL	The Letters of Mary Wordsworth 1800–1855, ed. Mary E. Burton (Oxford, 1958)

Reading i.

Duncan Wu, Wordsworth's Reading 1770–1799 (Cambridge, 1993)

Reading ii.

Duncan Wu, Wordsworth's Reading 1800–1815 (Cambridge, 1995)

Reed i.

Mark Reed, Wordsworth: A Chronology of the Early Years 1770–1799 (Cambridge, MA, 1967)

Reed ii.

Mark Reed, Wordsworth: A Chronology of the Middle Years 1800–1815 (Cambridge, MA, 1975)

Revisitings

Stephen Gill, Wordsworth's Revisitings (Oxford, 2011)

Robinson

Henry Crabb Robinson on Books and their Writers, ed. Edith J. Morley, 3 Vols. (1938)

Roe	Nicholas Roe, Wordsworth and Coleridge: The Radical Years (Oxford, 1988)

Shelley iii.

The Poems of Shelley 1819–1820, ed. Jack Donovan, Cian Duffy, Kelvin...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 28.1.2014
• Reihe/Serie: Blackwell Critical Biographies
• Reihe/Serie: Blackwell Critical Biographies
• Reihe/Serie: Wiley Blackwell Critical Biographies
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
• Schlagworte: 19th Century English Literature • Englische Literatur / 19. Jhd. • Literature • Literaturwissenschaft • William Wordsworth, Romantic, Poet, Dorothy Wordsworth, Dove Cottage, The Recluse, The Prelude, John Worthen, Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads, An Evening Walk, Descriptive Sketches, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Tintern Abbey, Resolution and Independence, Lake Poets, Romantic Poets, Poetry, Critical Biography • Wordsworth, William
• ISBN-10: 1-118-60492-X / 111860492X
• ISBN-13: 978-1-118-60492-2 / 9781118604922