"First published in 2020 in Great Britain by William Collins"--Title page verso. Includes section containing suggestions for further reading (page 499-509). Includes bibliographical references (pages 511-561) and index.
Contents:
Preface -- Chronology. Part One:. 1770-1806: Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive. A voice that flowed along my dreams ; Fostered ; There was a boy ; Walking into revolution ; Two revolutionary women ; But to be young was very Heaven ; Stepping westward ; A new spirit in poetry ; The banks of the Wye ; The experiment ; Lucy in the Harz with Dorothy ; By W. Wordsworth ; Home at Grasmere ; The child is father of the man -- Excursion: From new school to Lake School -- Part Two: 1807-1850: Wordworth's healing power. Surprised by grief ; This will never do ; Among the Cockneys ; The lost leader ; A medicine for my state of mind -- Retrospect. A sort of national property ; Love of nature leading to love of mankind -- Chronology.
Summary:
On the 250th anniversary of Wordsworth's birth comes a highly imaginative and vivid portrait of a revolutionary poet who embodied the spirit of his age. Published in time for the 250th anniversary of William Wordsworth's birth, this is the biography of a great poetic genius, a revolutionary who changed the world. Wordsworth rejoiced in the French Revolution and played a central role in the cultural upheaval that we call the Romantic Revolution. He and his fellow Romantics changed forever the way we think about childhood, the sense of the self, our connection to the natural environment, and the purpose of poetry. But his was also a revolutionary life in the old sense of the word, insofar as his art was of memory, the return of the past, the circling back to childhood and youth. This beautifully written biography is purposefully fragmentary, momentary, and selective, opening up what Wordsworth called "the hiding-places of my power."
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