Course: William Wordsworth: Poetry, People and Place

In this video, Professor Simon Bainbridge discusses the opening two sentences of The Prelude, explaining how these lines introduce the poem’s key themes. As you will remember from this week’s …

Listen to Professor Keith Hanley reading the opening lines of the earliest version of The Prelude (sometimes called the ‘1799 Prelude’ or the ‘Two-Part Prelude’). This is quite a difficult …

We hope you enjoyed our dramatisation of Wordsworth’s description of his ‘boat stealing’ from The Prelude. For the video, we had to edit the passage down, but you can listen …

Central to The Prelude are the two themes of childhood and memory. While much of the poem describes Wordsworth’s childhood adventures in the Lake District, the poet is equally concerned …

In the next few steps, we are going to concentrate on one of the most important ‘spots of time’ in The Prelude, generally known as the ‘boat stealing’ episode. Watch …

In this video Professor Simon Bainbridge discusses the theme of education in Wordsworth’s life and writing. The video is shot at Hawkshead Grammar School where the poet himself was educated. …

This week we will be studying Wordsworth’s autobiographical poem, The Prelude, which many people consider his masterpiece. The poem is particularly admired by readers for its depiction of Wordsworth’s childhood …

In the final Steps this week, we are going to examine another poem from Lyrical Ballads, ‘Old Man Travelling’. You can begin by listening to the poem. In the next …

A key feature of this course is the opportunity to examine the manuscripts of Wordsworth’s poetry, 90% of which are held in the Jerwood Centre, Grasmere. In this video, Professor …

Watch this video in which Professor Sally Bushell examines the manuscript of ‘Old Man Travelling’ and explains the process by which Wordsworth created the poem. You may want to pay …

Now listen to this discussion of ‘The Tables Turned’ with Professor Simon Bainbridge. We would emphasise that this there is much more that can be said about the poem than …

Now listen to Professor Keith Hanley reading one of Wordsworth’s poems from Lyrical Ballads, ‘The Tables Turned’. You can also follow the text of the poem on screen. A copy …

Lyrical Ballads is one of the most important collections in the history of English Literature. It was first published in 1798 and contained poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor …

Watch this video, which introduces the Jerwood Centre, the archive of the Wordsworth Trust, which holds ninety percent of William Wordsworth’s manuscripts. We will be visiting the Jerwood Centre on …