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).

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