By examining the family and financial circumstances of Wordsworth’s early years, this illuminating biography reshapes our understanding of the great Romantic poet’s most creative period of life and writing.

• Features new research into Wordsworth’s financial situation, and into how the poet and his family survived financially
• Offers a new understanding of the role of his great unwritten poem ‘The Recluse’
• Presents a new assessment of the relationship between Wordsworth and Coleridge

JOHN WORTHEN is Emeritus Professor, University of Nottingham, UK. His books include The Cambridge Introduction to Samuel Taylor Coleridge (2010), Robert Schumann: Life and Death of a Musician (2007), D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider (2005), The Gang: Coleridge, the Hutchinsons and the Wordsworths in 1802 (2001), and D. H. Lawrence: The Early Years 1885–1912 (1991).