William Wordsworth was born in Cumberland in 1770, his birthplace near to what is known as the Lake District had a considerable influence on his poetry. After going to University in Cambridge , he travelled extensively in Europe especially the Alps region. He was very close to his sister Dorothy and even when he married Mary Hutchinson, his sister lived with the couple. In the preface to Lyrical Ballads , Wordsworth set out the central tenet of the Romantic movement which was to seek a new realism in poetry based on the “real language of man”. Wordsworth with other poets such as Coleridge and Southey lived in the Lake District and formed the basis of what was known as the Lakeland poets. Wordsworth and the rest of the Lakeland poets achieved considerable fame in their lifetime, Wordsworth being made Poet Laureate in 1843, he died in 1850 and was buried in Grasmere at the heart of his beloved Lake District.
