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What are William Wordsworth’s achievements?

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Last updated date: 19th Sep 2024
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Hint: William Wordsworth was a founding member of English Romanticism as well as one of its most prominent characters and thinkers. He is recognised as a poet interested in spiritual and epistemological speculation, a poet concerned with the human link to nature, and a staunch supporter of employing common people's terminology and speech patterns in poetry.

Complete answer:
Wordsworth was a prominent Romantic poet from England. He is renowned as a natural poet. All of his poems are about his passion for nature and the joy he experienced there. The Prelude, The Solitary Reaper, Ode: Intimations of Immortality, Lucy Gray, Lines Composed A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, and others are among his most recognised works. From 1843 until 1850, he served as Britain's poet laureate.

Wordsworth got an honorary doctorate in Civil Law from the University of Durham in 1838, and the same honorary degree from the University of Oxford the following year, when John Keble lauded him as the "poet of mankind," praise that Wordsworth deeply valued. In 1842, the government granted him a £300-per-year Civil List annuity.

Wordsworth was named Poet Laureate after Robert Southey died in 1843. He first declined the honour, claiming that he was too old, but eventually accepted after Prime Minister Robert Peel promised him that "nothing will be expected of you." As a result, Wordsworth became the only poet laureate who did not produce any formal verses.

Note: In 1787, Wordsworth debuted as a writer with the publication of a sonnet in The European Magazine. In the same year, he enrolled at Cambridge's St John's College. In 1791, he obtained his bachelor's degree. Wordsworth's first poems were published in the volumes An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches in 1793.