Wordsworth is not, of course, remembered as a prose writer but as a poet of spiritual and epistemological speculation, a poet concerned with the human relationship to nature. Yet recently, certain critics, as part of a revisionist critique of older interpretations of Wordsworth's verse, have turned to his political essays for evidence, especially concerning the poet's rejection of his youthful radicalism. Wordsworth's political writings, especially "A Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff,"
The Convention of Cintra (1809), and
Two Addresses to the Freeholders of Westmoreland (1818), while historically significant, are of primary interest as background for the poetry: for Wordsworth, poetics always determined politics.
William Wordsworth, son of John and Ann Cookson Wordsworth, was born on 7 April 1770 in Cockermouth, Cumberland. The Wordsworth children--Richard, William, Dorothy, John, and Christopher--remained close throughout their lives, and the support Dorothy offered William during his long career has attained legendary status. John Wordsworth, William's father, was legal agent to Sir James Lowther, Baronet of Lowther (later Earl of Lonsdale), a political magnate and property owner. Wordsworth's deep love for the "beauteous forms" of the natural world was established early. The Wordsworth children seem to have lived in a sort of rural paradise along the Derwent River, which ran past the terraced garden below the ample house whose tenancy John Wordsworth had obtained from his employer before his marriage to Ann Cookson.
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