Based on intimate knowledge of the poet's manuscripts, on a fresh look at contemporary records, and on a study of the mass of material that has appeared since the last serious biography, a quarter-century ago, this new account of Wordsworth focuses on what was most important to him - his life as a writer. The common notion is that the older Wordsworth betrayed his youthful, radical self to become a prosy Tory bore. By contrast, this intelligent and authoritative biography demonstrates that once the poet had returned to the Lake District, determined to live dedicated to poetry at whatever cost, his life took on a unity and purpose it had previously lacked. His politics certainly changed, and his poetic power waned, but from 1799 almost until his death in 1850, Wordsworth single-mindedly shaped his own life in submission to an imaginative possession whose importance he never doubted. It was, in its way, a heroic life. Wordsworth suffered numbing blows from the death of friends and family, including three of his own children. Critics reviled his poetry for over twenty years, and he never made enough money by his pen to live on - unlike his dear friend Scott. Yet his dedication to his art did not waver. In middle age he knew that contemporaries valued him as a moral sage; in old age he suffered the embarrassment of being a cultural icon. The lucid narrative that Stephen Gill draws out is the story of that hard-won triumph: its purpose is to bring readers back freshly to poetry that is full of human understanding and experience, and a tested, sober faith in 'Man's unconquerable mind'.

斯蒂芬·吉尔，牛津大学荣休教授，林肯学院特聘院士，长期担任华兹华斯基金会董事。他编辑的《威廉·华兹华斯索尔兹伯里平原诗歌》（1975）开启了康奈尔权威版华兹华斯诗歌丛书；此后两度编辑牛津版华兹华斯诗文选。代表作有《华兹华斯与维多利亚人》（1998），《华兹华斯的重游》（2012）。第一版《威廉·华兹华斯传》（1989）享有盛誉，为纪念诗人二百五十周年华诞，特此增订再版。