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The Worlds of Gilbert and Sullivan

William Wordsworth was born in 1770 and was educated at Hawkshead Grammar School. His mother died when he was eight years old, and his father died when he was thirteen. These deaths affected him profoundly and he refers to them in his poem The Prelude. This poem of thirteen books was completed in 1885. His life from the age of twenty-five was spent with his younger sister Dorothy, who remained with him through his marriage until his death in 1850.

This Lakeland poet's life began as a rebel who espoused the French Revolution, and ended in 1850 disillusioned by the Terror in France and a happier family man with much respect for his Homeland and the British way of life.

He fell in love with the daughter of a surgeon at Blois, Annette Vallon, who bore him a daughter. Later, he married Mary Hutchinson and lived in the Lake district. They had five children, two of whom died early in childhood. He was a seasoned traveller in England and abroad, and a prolific writer of poetry.

We have included five of his shorter poems here: Daffodils (really entitled I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, but we all came to know as Daffodils); two of his sonnets which reflect his perceptions of the London just prior to Gilbert and Sullivan's time - London 1802, and Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3 1802; the Kitten At Play, and finally The Solitary Reaper.

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