Henry Edridge (1769-1821). William Wordsworth, May 1806. The Wordsworth Trust.
William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, along with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads (1798). Wordsworth’s magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude, a semiautobiographical poem of his early years that he revised and expanded a number of times. It was posthumously titled and published, before which it was generally known as “the poem to Coleridge.” Wordsworth was Britain’s Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death in 1850.
James Engell is Gurney Professor of English and Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University, where he chaired the Department of English for six years. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Senior Fellow at the National Humanities Center, he has authored and edited numerous books and articles on Romantic literature and the state of higher education in America.
Michael D. Raymond completed his M.A. at Harvard and his Ph.D. at Fordham on William Wordsworth. For four decades, he has been president of his own financial service company, Raymond Wealth Advisors. He lives with his wife in North Haven, Connecticut, near their three children and five grandchildren.
Francis Towne (1740-1816). The Entrance into Borrowdale, undated. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.