William Wordsworth was born April 7, 1770, in Cockermouth, Cumberland, to John and Anne (Cookson). Wordsworth, the second of their five children. His father was a law agent and rent collector for Lord Lonsdale, and the family was fairly well off. After his mother's death in 1778 he was sent to Hawkshead Grammar School, near Windermere; in 1787 he went up to St. John's College, Cambridge. He enjoyed hiking: during the "long" (i.e., summer) vacation of 1788 he tramped …showed first 75 words of 646 total…

…showed last 75 words of 646 total…or the 1850, but agree that in either case it is the most successful blank verse epic since Paradise Lost. Finally fully reconciled to Coleridge, the two of them toured the Rhineland in 1828. Durham University granted him an honorary Doctor of Civil Law degree in 1838, and Oxford conferred the same honor the next year. When Robert Southey died in 1843, Wordsworth was named Poet Laureate. He died in 1850, and his wife published the much-revised Prelude that summer.