William Wordsworth

Wordsworth was a revolutionary, a rebel, a lover and a poet. Most people think of him as a dreary Victorian poet, but his early life tells us something different entirely. He was orphaned in his early teens, was sent away to school and university, butu he hated it and called all desks, 'instruments of torture'. In 1790, he went on a walking trip with a firend and they walked as far as Switzerland before turning back.
As they walked through France, the French Revolution had just begun and Wordsworth liked the idea of a country free of the tyranny of a monarchy and nobility.
The following year, he visited again - this time 'The Terror' had started and with it, hostility to all foreigners. But this didn't stop William meeting and falling in love with a French woman.
He had to run for his life back to England and a few months later, his daughter was born. He didn't see her again until 1802.
After all this, he decided to become a poet and write poetry that would speak to all types of people from all walks of life. He dedicated himself to this task until 1808 and the thoughts and concerns he expresses in his poems are a relevant today as they were 200 plus years ago.
Nearly all his best work was written between 1799 and 1808, when he lived in a disused inn that he renamed 'Dove Cottage' in Grasmere in the Lake District. You can still visit his house there and see his possessions, hear more about his life and discover that poetry still has a place in British culture.