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Unit 9: Daffodils by William Wordsworth

in Goslar, and, despite extreme stress and loneliness, he began work on an autobiographical Notes
piece later titled The Prelude. He wrote a number of famous poems, including “The Lucy poems”.
He and his sister moved back to England, now to Dove Cottage in Grasmere in the Lake District,
and this time with fellow poet Robert Southey nearby. Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey
came to be known as the “Lake Poets”. Through this period, many of his poems revolve around
themes of death, endurance, separation and grief.

9.1.5 Marriage and Children

In 1802, Lowther’s heir, William Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale, paid the £4,000 debt owed to
Wordsworth’s father incurred through Lowther’s failure to pay his aide. It was this repayment
that afforded Wordsworth the financial means to marry, and on October 4, following his visit
with Dorothy to France to arrange matters with Annette; Wordsworth married a childhood
friend, Mary Hutchinson. Dorothy continued to live with the couple and grew close to Mary.
The following year, Mary gave birth to the first of five children, three of whom predeceased
William and Mary:
John Wordsworth (18 June 1803 – 1875). Married four times:

1. Isabella Curwen (d. 1848) had six children: Jane, Henry, William, John, Charles and
Edward.
2. Helen Ross (d. 1854). No children

3. Mary Ann Dolan (d. after 1858) had one daughter Dora (b. 1858).
4. Mary Gamble. No children

Dora Wordsworth (16 August 1804 – 9 July 1847). Married Edward Quillinan in 1843.
Thomas Wordsworth (15 June 1806 – 1 December 1812).
Catherine Wordsworth (6 September 1808 – 4 June 1812).

William “Willy” Wordsworth (12 May 1810 – 1883). Married Fanny Graham and had four
children: Mary Louisa, William, Reginald, Gordon.

9.1.6 Autobiographical Work and Poems in Two Volumes

Wordsworth had for years been making plans to write a long philosophical poem in three parts,
which he intended to call The Recluse. He had in 1798–99 started an autobiographical poem,
which he never named but called the “poem to Coleridge”, which would serve as an appendix
to The Recluse. In 1804, he began expanding this autobiographical work, having decided to
make it a prologue rather than an appendix to the larger work he planned. By 1805, he had
completed it, but refused to publish such a personal work until he had completed the whole
of The Recluse. The death of his brother John, in 1805, affected him strongly.

The source of Wordsworth’s philosophical allegiances as articulated in The Prelude and in such
shorter works as “Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey” has been the source of much
critical debate. While it had long been supposed that Wordsworth relied chiefly on Coleridge
for philosophical guidance, more recent scholarship has suggested that Wordsworth’s ideas
may have been formed years before he and Coleridge became friends in the mid-1790s. While in
Revolutionary Paris in 1792, the 22-year-old Wordsworth made the acquaintance of the mysterious
traveller John “Walking” Stewart (1747–1822), who was nearing the end of a thirty-years’
peregrination from Madras, India, through Persia and Arabia, across Africa and all of Europe,

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