1. William

(Apr 7, 1770, Cockermouth – Apr 23, 1850, Grasmere), leading English poet of the early Romantic period (Romanticism). He was the son of a lawyer representing a wealthy estate owner. Orphaned in 1783, the young poet was shaped more by his school years in Hawkshead and the natural beauty of life in the Lake District of northern England than by Cambridge and early industrial London. A walking tour through ¶ France during his last summer break, when the first anniversary of the storming of the Bastille was b…