"William Wordsworth was considered one of the greatest and most influential English romantic poets of his time"(Young 369). He was known for his innovative concepts of nature, his use of "language really used by men," and his use of simple topics surrounded by mass detail. "What made Wordsworth's poetry so favorable and memorable was his challenge of formal poetic diction, profoundly affecting the course of modern poetry"(369). Wordsworth's experimentation with colloquialism and nature imagery was met with mixed reviews. .
"Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, Cumberland, England"(Exploring Poetry). "Both of his parents died when he was young"(Exploring Poetry). "He was sent to a boarding school, along with his brother, in Hawkeshead"(Exploring Poetry). "In the rural surroundings of Hawkeshead, situated in the beautiful Lake District, Wordsworth developed a keen appreciation of nature that would inform much of his later writing"(Exploring Poetry). "In his later years after graduating from St. John's College in Cambridge, Wordsworth had no definite career plans, so he traveled around quite a bit"(Exploring Poetry). "He moved to France and became involved in the French Revolution"(Exploring Poetry). "He fell in love with a French woman, but due to money problems was not able to marry her"(Exploring Poetry). "They had a daughter together, soon after Wordsworth had to flee France and leave them"(Exploring Poetry). Through all this pain and emotion Wordsworth wrote and put his emotion into his poems. .
Wordsworth had a unique understanding of nature. He published many pieces, one of which was the Lyrical Ballads. "The publication of this collection of experimental poems caused only a mild sensation at the outset but has since been regarded as a pivotal event in the advent of Romanticism. In his famous Preface to the Second Edition of Lyrical Ballads, published four years later, Wordsworth emphasized the importance of writing in a deliberately simple and powerfully direct style to which readers could easily relate.