Wordsworth family
Biography
William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) began the English Romantic movement with their publication of Lyrical Ballads in 1798. Wordsworth and his family settled in the Lake District where he, Coleridge and Robert Southey became known as the “Lake Poets.” His youngest brother, Christopher Wordsworth (1774-1846), received his Doctor of Divinity degree from Trinity College, Cambridge becoming Master of Trinity in 1820 and a renowned scholar during his life. Christopher’s third son, also Christopher (1807-1885), who was educated at Trinity College and eventually served as an English bishop in the Anglican Church, became known as a poet and scholar as well as a cleric. He was appointed Bishop of Lincoln in 1869. He published editions of the Greek New Testament (1856-1860) and the Old Testament (1864-1870) with commentaries. He composed hymns, and published a book on epigraphy, Inscriptiones Pompeianae (1837). He was his uncle’s literary executor and wrote his biography, Memoirs of William Wordsworth (1851).
Other Wordsworth family members with connections to this collection include William’s grandson, Gordon (1860-1935), the youngest son of William Wordsworth, Jr. (1810-1883) and his wife, Fanny Eliza Graham (1821-1888). Susan Wordsworth (1846-1912) was the fourth daughter of Christopher Wordsworth, Bishop of Lincoln. She became prominent in directing philanthropic work as the Head of Greyladies’ College for Women Workers which served as a religious center for women who worked in twenty-two South London parishes.