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William WordsworthA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
“Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802” may seem a relatively simple poem to those living after the Romantic Movement. However, in Wordsworth’s time it epitomized a changing style in writing, as well as subtle social commentary directed at an increasingly more industrialized world. Many of the themes and styles that Wordsworth pioneered would in fact give rise to the poetry that became so typical in the century that followed.
Wordsworth was born at a time of great change in Europe. During his lifetime he saw both the Industrial Revolution, as well as the French Revolution, and both of those revolution’s effects on his country and across the world. It was a dynamic time, which the novelist Charles Dickens called “The best of times…the worst of times…the age of wisdom…the age of foolishness” (A Tale of Two Cities). On one hand, new inventions and machines were making life easier for some; England saw the growth of a larger middle class. On the other hand, many of those who owned the new business were exploiting factory workers, causing increasing hardship for the lower classes.
Against this backdrop, Wordsworth became a champion of the common person. He believed in the importance of the individual, and like Enlightenment thinkers, believed that human beings should be given their freedom to live as they chose.
By William Wordsworth
A Complaint
William Wordsworth
A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal
William Wordsworth
Daffodils
William Wordsworth
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
William Wordsworth
Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey ...
William Wordsworth
London, 1802
William Wordsworth
Lyrical Ballads
William Wordsworth
My Heart Leaps Up
William Wordsworth
Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
William Wordsworth
Preface to Lyrical Ballads
William Wordsworth
She Dwelt Among The Untrodden Ways
William Wordsworth
She Was a Phantom of Delight
William Wordsworth
The Prelude
William Wordsworth
The Solitary Reaper
William Wordsworth
The World Is Too Much with Us
William Wordsworth
To the Skylark
William Wordsworth
We Are Seven
William Wordsworth