Deploying a wide range of illustrations, from manuscripts in Wordsworth's hand in The British Library, and at the Wordsworth Trust at Dove Cottage in Grasmere, to photographs, portraits and paintings in many other collections, Stephen Hebron discusses the life of a writer whose works had a tremendous influence on his contemporaries and later poets alike. He recounts how Wordsworth left his upbringing in Cumbria for Cambridge University and travelled extensively in Revolutionary France and the rest of Europe, before returning to Dove Cottage where he created some of the leading works of the Romantic period, becoming an establishment figures in his later years.