Map of the Wordsworths’ Grasmere

A map of Grasmere in the English Lake District, showing places associated with William Wordsworth, the first of the Romantic Poets and his sister, Dorothy, also a Romantic Poet, prose writer and lover of nature.  They lived there for 14 years and he described it as ‘the loveliest spot that man hath ever found’.

Dove Cottage was their first home in Grasmere from 1799 to 1808 and, whilst living there, he married Mary Hutchinson, who was a close friend of Dorothy, in 1802.  Most of his major work was created during this time, and Dorothy also wrote her ‘Grasmere Journal’.  In 1808 they all moved to Allan Bank and lived there for two years, along with their friend, the poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.  In 1810, they moved to the Old Rectory, opposite St Oswald’s Church, and finally to Rydal Mount in 1813, along with the surviving children of William and Mary.  It remained their home for the rest of their lives.  William died on 23 April 1850, Dorothy in 1855 and finally Mary in 1859.

Known also as one of the Lake Poets, he was one of the founders of English Romanticism, one of its most central figures and important intellects. He was best known for ‘Lyrical Ballads’, co-written with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and ‘The Prelude’, a Romantic epic poem chronicling the ‘growth of a poet’s mind …’.  He also believed that nature provides the ultimate good influence on the human mind and that a love of nature can lead to a love of human kind. He was Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death.

His most famous poem, ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’, describes the long belt of daffodils he saw when out walking with his sister Dorothy by the shore of Ullswater in 1802.