The circumstances of his return and his subsequent behaviour raised doubts as to his declared wish to marry Annette. Financial problems and Britain's tense relations with France forced him to return to England alone the following year. He fell in love with a French woman, Annette Vallon, who, in 1792, gave birth to their daughter Caroline. In November 1791, Wordsworth visited Revolutionary France and became enchanted with the Republican movement. In 1790 he went on a walking tour of Europe, during which he toured the Alps extensively, and visited nearby areas of France, Switzerland, and Italy. He returned to Hawkshead for the first two summers of his time at Cambridge, and often spent later holidays on walking tours, visiting places famous for the beauty of their landscape. That same year he began attending St John's College, Cambridge. Wordsworth made his debut as a writer in 1787 when he published a sonnet in The European Magazine. She and William did not meet again for nine years. Īfter the death of Wordsworth's mother, in 1778, his father sent him to Hawkshead Grammar School in Lancashire (now in Cumbria) and sent Dorothy to live with relatives in Yorkshire. It was at the school in Penrith that he met the Hutchinsons, including Mary, who later became his wife. Wordsworth was taught both the Bible and the Spectator, but little else. Wordsworth was taught to read by his mother and attended, first, a tiny school of low quality in Cockermouth, then a school in Penrith for the children of upper-class families, where he was taught by Ann Birkett, who insisted on instilling in her students traditions that included pursuing both scholarly and local activities, especially the festivals around Easter, May Day and Shrove Tuesday. His hostile interactions with them distressed him to the point of contemplating suicide. William also spent time at his mother's parents' house in Penrith, Cumberland, where he was exposed to the moors, but did not get along with his grandparents or his uncle, who also lived there. William was also allowed to use his father's library. However, he did encourage William in his reading, and in particular set him to commit large portions of verse to memory, including works by Milton, Shakespeare and Spenser. He was frequently away from home on business, so the young William and his siblings had little involvement with him and remained distant from him until his death in 1783.

Wordsworth's father was a legal representative of James Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale, and, through his connections, lived in a large mansion in the small town. They had three other siblings: Richard, the eldest, who became a lawyer John, born after Dorothy, who went to sea and died in 1805 when the ship of which he was captain, the Earl of Abergavenny, was wrecked off the south coast of England and Christopher, the youngest, who entered the Church and rose to be Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. William's sister, the poet and diarist Dorothy Wordsworth, to whom he was close all his life, was born the following year, and the two were baptised together. The second of five children born to John Wordsworth and Ann Cookson, William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 in what is now named Wordsworth House in Cockermouth, Cumberland, (now in Cumbria), part of the scenic region in northwestern England known as the Lake District. Main article: Early life of William Wordsworth

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