 Hello learners! Hi! Chanika Roy, welcome you all to the audio-visual program on Unit 2, namely William Wordsworth, Life & Works, included in the course titled, Poetry of BA Second Semester English. In Part 1 of the video lesson on this unit, we have already discussed romanticism in details and how it differs from the Augustan age in spirit as well as values. We have also learned that lyrical ballads jointly written by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Colleridge marked the beginning of the romantic age in English literature. In this video, we shall focus on the following points. The main objectives of this video are to describe William Wordsworth as a romantic poet to explain about Wordsworth's life and his important works. In the first part of the video, we have already noted that the romantics sought to lose the artificiality of the poetry and sought to communicate real events in simple language coloured by the imagination. Nature was of prime importance and individual imagination was the prime creative faculty. A romantic poet like Wordsworth was much influenced by his surroundings and the place where he was born. In fact, the scenic region of England, known as the Lake District, with its magnificent surroundings created in him a sense of wonder and reverence for nature and kindled his poetic sensibilities and imagination. It is here amidst the simple county folk that Wordsworth spent much of his life and they had a lasting and profound influence on him as the common people was a major concern in his poetry. It is from them that he developed a faith in humanity and in the element of mental things of life. He had four siblings but was closest to his sister Dorothy who played an important role throughout his life. With regard to his education, Wordsworth was taught initially by his mother at home and his father too encouraged Wordsworth in his reading of Shakespeare and Milton. He then attended Hochschild's drama school and later went to St. Jones College in Cambridge where he obtained his BA in 1791. Towards the end of his final year, Wordsworth went on a walking tour through Europe and he came into contact with the French Revolution, an experience that influenced both his poetry and his political sensibilities. Wordsworth's meeting with Samuel Taylor Colleridge in 1795 is an important event in Wordsworth's poetic life and in the development of the Romantic Age in England as already mentioned. It was with Colleridge that Wordsworth published the famous lyrical ballads in 1798 which is considered the beginning of Romanticism in England. Significantly, it is the preface to the second edition that makes the lyrical ballads so important to English Romanticism. In the preface, Wordsworth outlines his theories of poetry which have come to be seen as the defining characteristics of the poetry of the Romantic period and the preface can thus be seen as an unofficial manifesto of the Romantic movement. Wordsworth was made poet laureate of Britain in 1843 upon the death of Robert Saudi. He breathed his last in 1850 on the 23rd of April. Now that we are familiar with Romantic poetry and Wordsworth's contribution towards it as well as Wordsworth's life and his time, let us focus on the important works of the poet. If we talk about his first attempts at poetry, it was in school when he began to write poems. However, he made his debut as a poet in 1787 when a sonnet by him was published in the European magazine. His visits to France and considerable time spent there resulted in his first collection of poems and evening walk and descriptive sketches in 1793. The year 1795 also marks the year Wordsworth met with Colleridge and they went on to publish lyrical ballads in 1798. And this year has been taken to mean the beginning of the Romantic age in England. This book contained some of their most well-known poems including Tintin Abbey by Wordsworth and The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner by Colleridge. The edition published in 1802 contained Wordsworth's Preface which is considered a central work of Romantic literary theory. It must be noted that 1795 is also the year when Wordsworth wrote his only play The Bode Errors and it was completed in 1797. However, it remained unpublished for a long time until it was finally published in 1842 with major revisions. Wordsworth travelled through Germany in 1798 to 1999 with Dorothy and Colleridge and this trip resulted in many poems including his famous Lucy Poems. Wordsworth's second collection of poems titled Poems in Two Volumes was published in 1807 and it contained his poetry written from 1787 to 1807 and also included the sonnet composed upon Westminster Bridge. Wordsworth's most famous work is considered to be the prelude on which he worked throughout his life and was eventually published three months after his death by his wife Mary in the year 1850. Some of Wordsworth's political works also include intimations of immortality, the excursion, etc. and among his prose works mentioned may be made of literary criticism, letters of Dorothy and William Wordsworth, the love letters of William and Mary Wordsworth, essay upon epitaphs, etc. to name a few. As we come to the end of our discussion we must be able to address questions like why is the preface to the lyrical ballads important to romanticism in England or what should poetic language be like according to Wordsworth and why? You can consult the following books in order to broaden your ideas on the life and works of William Wordsworth. I hope this video will enable you to draw out the main aspects of William Wordsworth's poetic contribution in the gamut of English romantic poetry. Thank you.