William Wordsworth (1770–1850): Poet. Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, the second of five of five children of John Wordsworth (1741–1783), a legal agent for the Lowther family, the most powerful landowners in the Lake District. After his mother died in 1778, Wordsworth was sent to Hawkshead Grammar School and then St John’s College, Cambridge (1787–1791). In 1791 he visited France and had a brief relationship with Annette Vallon, with whom he had a daughter, Caroline. Wordsworth began publishing poetry in 1793 and a legacy from his friend, Raisley Calvert, in 1795 allowed him to concentrate on a literary career. Wordsworth and Southey first met in Bristol in 1795 – Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy, spent the years 1795–1798 living in Dorset and Somerset and became close to Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Wordsworth and Coleridge published Lyrical Ballads (1798) together and travelled in Germany in 1798–1799. Wordsworth then moved to the Lake District, living first at Dove Cottage, then at Allen Bank and finally at Rydal Mount. He married Mary Hutchinson, whom he had known since childhood, in 1802 and the couple had five children. Wordsworth’s relationship with Southey became closer after the Southeys moved to Keswick in 1803 and particularly after the death of John Wordsworth in 1805, when Southey provided comfort and managed some of Wordsworth’s business affairs in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy. As the Southey and Wordsworth children grew up there was much mutual visiting between the two households. Wordsworth’s early radicalism faded, and he obtained the Government post of Distributor of Stamps for Westmorland in 1812 – a development that also ensured his views aligned with those of Southey. Wordsworth’s poetical reputation grew in the 1810s and 1820s, after the publication of Poems, in Two Volumes (1807) and The Excursion (1814). Southey early recognised Wordsworth as one of the great poets of his time, persistently defending his reputation – though he maintained a detached amusement about his unconscious pride and vanity. He did, though, seek Wordsworth’s advice on key moments in his career, as on his publication of a letter in the Courier in January 1822, attacking Byron. Wordsworth’s view of Southey’s work was also complex – he dedicated Peter Bell (1819) to Southey, but remained unenthusiastic about much of the latter’s poetry. After Southey’s death in 1843 Wordsworth succeeded him as Poet Laureate.