THE following is a list of the main biographical sources which I used. Collections of Wordsworth’s poetry and purely critical works devoted to him, of which there are hundreds, are not included. Mention, however, must be made of John O. Hayden’s edition of the Poems (2 vols, Penguin, 1977), which I found most useful.
By far the most important biographical material on Wordsworth is to be found in the Wordsworth letters. They were first edited by Ernest de Selincourt (6 vols, Oxford University Press, 1935—9).
From 1969, the Clarendon Press have issued new revised editions, as below:
The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth
I The Early Years, 1787—1805, rev. Chester L. Shaver, 1967
II The Middle Years: Part 1, 1806—1811, rev. Mary Moorman, 1969
III The Middle Years: Part 2, 1812—1820, rev. Mary Moorman and Alan G. Hill, 1970
IV The Later Years: Part 1, 1821—1828, rev. Alan G. Hill, 1978
V The Later Years: Part 2, 1829—1834, rev. Alan G. Hill, 1980
VI The Later Years: Part 3, 1835—1840, rev. Alan G. Hill, 1981
VII The Later Years: Part 4, 1841—1850, rev. Alan G. Hill, 1983
VIII A Supplement of New Letters, ed. by Alan G. Hill, 1993
The official biography of Wordsworth (by the poet’s nephew) is Christopher Worthworth Memoirs of William Wordsworth, 2 vols, London, 1851. The standard modern biography is by Stephen Gill, William Wordsworth, A Life, Clarendon Press, 1989. Also of interest is Mary Moorman, William Wordsworth: A Biography: vol. 1, The Early Years, 1770—1803; vol. 2, The Later Years, 1803—1850; Oxford University Press, 1957, 1965.
Wordsworth’s own prose: Wordsworth’s Prose Works are available in the edition by W.J.B. Owen and J.W. Smyser (3 vols, Oxford University Press, 1974), and his Guide to the Lakes (1835) in the facsimile of the 1906 edition edited by Ernest de Selincourt (Oxford University Press, 1977). Dorothy Wordsworth’s Journals have been edited by Mary Moorman (with a reprinted Introduction by Helen Darbishire, Oxford University Press, 1971).
Bateson, F.W., Wordsworth, A Reinterpretation, London, Longman, 1954
Beatty, Frederika, William Wordsworth at Rydal Mount, London, Dent, 1939
Blanchard, F.M., Portraits of Wordsworth, Cornell University Press, 1959
Clutterbuck, Nesta, ed., William Wordsworth, 1770—1970, Dove Cottage Trustees, Grasmere, 1970
Coburn, Kathleen, In Pursuit of Coleridge, London, Bodley Head, 1977
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, Biographica Literaria (1817), ed. G. Watson, London, Dent, 1975
_______, Notebooks, ed. Kathleen Coburn, 6 vols, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957-62
Curtis, Jared, ed., The Fenwick Notes of William Wordsworth, Bristol 1993
Darbishire, Helen, Wordsworth, London, Longman, 1953
De Quincey, Thomas, Recollections of the Lake Poets, ed. David Wright, Penguin, 1970
Fink, Z.S., The Early Wordsworthian Milieu, Oxford University Press, 1958
Harper, G.M., William Wordsworth, his Life, Work and Influence, 2 vols, 1916
Hood, Edwin Paxton, William Wordsworth, London, Cash, 1856
Howe, H.W., rev. Robert Woof, Greta Hall, Keswick, 1977
Johnstone, Kenneth R. and Ruoff, Gene W., eds, The Age of William Wordsworth: Critical Essays on the Romantic Tradition, Rutgers University Press, 1987
Legouis, Emile, The Early Life of William Wordsworth, London, Dent, 1897 William Wordsworth and Annette Vallon, London, Dent, 1922
Maclean, C.M., Dorothy and William Wordsworth, Cambridge University Press, 1927
Margoliouth, H.M., Wordsworth and Coleridge, 1795—1934, Oxford University Press, 1953
Purkis, John, A Preface to Wordsworth, London, Longman, 1970
Raine, Kathleen, Coleridge, London, Longman, 1953
Rawnsley, Canon H.D., Recollections of Wordsworth among the Peasantry of Westmorland (1882), London, Dillons University Bookshop, 1968
_______, A Reminiscence of Wordsworth’s Day, Cockermouth, 1896
Read, Herbert, Wordsworth, London, Cape, 1930
Reed, Mark, Wordsworth, Chronology of the Early Years, 1770—1799, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1967
_______, Chronology of the Middle Years, 1800—1815, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1975
Robertson, Eric, Wordsworthshire, London, Chatto and Windus, 1911
Robinson, Henry Crabb, ed. Edith J. Morley, Correspondence with the Wordsworth Circle, 2 vols, Edinburgh, 1889
Roe, Nicholas, Wordsworth and Coleridge: The Radical Years, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1988
Schneider, Ben Ross, Wordsworth’s Cambridge Education, Cambridge University Press, 1957
Simmons, Jack, Southey, London, Collins, 1945
Smith, Elsie, An Estimate of Wordsworth by his Contemporaries, Oxford University Press, 1932
Thompson, T.W., ed. Robert Woof, Wordsworth’s Hawkshead, Oxford University Press, 1970
Wheatley, Vera, The Life and Work of Harriet Martineau, London, Secker and Warburg, 1957
Woof, Pamela, Dorothy Wordsworth, Writer, The Wordsworth Trust, 1994
Woof, Robert, The Wordsworth Circle, Dove Cottage Trustees, Grasmere, 1979
Wordsworth, Dorothy, The Grasmere Journals, ed. Pamela Woof, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1991
Wordsworth, Jonathan, Abrams, M.H., Gill, Stephen, The Cornell Series, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1975
Wordsworth, Jonathan, Jaye, Michael C. and Woof, Robert, William Wordsworth and the Age of English Romanticism, Rutgers University Press and the Wordsworth Trust, 1987
Wordsworth, William, The Prelude (1799, 1805, 1850), eds Jonathan Wordsworth, M.H. Abrams and Stephen Gill, New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1979
Wu, Duncan, Wordsworth’s Reading, 1770—1799, Cambridge University Press, 1996
_______, Wordsworth’s Reading, 1800—1815, Cambridge University Press, 1996
MORE RECENT BOOKS
Barker, Juliet, William Wordsworth: A Life, New York, Viking, 2000 Wordsworth: A Life in Letters, New York, Viking, 2002
Gill, Stephen, William Wordsworth: A Life, Oxford University Press, 1989
Johnston, Kenneth R., The Hidden Wordsworth: Poet, Lover, Rebel, Spy, London, W.W. Norton & Co., 1998
_______, The Hidden Wordsworth, London, Pimlico, 2000
Jones, Kathleen, A Passionate Sisterhood: The Sisters, Wives and Daughters of the Lake Poets, London, Constable, 1997
Sisman, Adam, The Friendship: Wordsworth and Coleridge: London, Harper, 2006
Speck, W.A., Robert Southey: Entire Man of Letters, London, Yale University Press, 2006
Wilson, Frances, The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth, London, Faber, 2008
Woof, Robert, Treasures of the Wordsworth Trust, The Wordsworth Trust, 2005