William Wordsworth (7 April 1770 - 23 April 1850) was a major English Romantic poet who; with Samuel Taylor Coleridge; helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads (1798).

Wordsworth's magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude; a semi-autobiographical poem of his early years that he revised and expanded a number of times. Wordsworth was Britain's Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death in 1850.