Radical Wordsworth

The Poet Who Changed the World

By: Jonathan Bate

Narrated by: Matthew Waterson

On the 250th anniversary of Wordsworth's birth comes a highly imaginative and vivid portrait of a revolutionary poet who embodied the spirit of his age.

Published in time for the 250th anniversary of William Wordsworth's birth, this is the biography of a great poetic genius, a revolutionary who changed the world. Wordsworth rejoiced in the French Revolution and played a central role in the cultural upheaval that we call the Romantic Revolution.

He and his fellow Romantics changed forever the way we think about childhood, the sense of the self, our connection to the natural environment, and the purpose of poetry. But his was also a revolutionary life in the old sense of the word, insofar as his art was of memory, the return of the past, the circling back to childhood and youth.

This beautifully written biography is purposefully fragmentary, momentary, and selective, opening up what Wordsworth called "the hiding-places of my power."

©2020 Jonathan Bate (P)2020 Tantor

A words worth to listen

This great audiobook by Jonathan Bate is filled with insight into our Beloved Poet, William Wordsworth. The words and the narration are wonderfully done. Although, I couldn’t disagree more with Professor Bate about who was the real man behind the writings of Shakespeare (it is being conclusively proven beyond a shadow of a doubt yearly that he was the 17th Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere), this amazing book is culminated in its final chapter On the Love of Nature Leading to the Love of Mankind. I cannot agree more with his depth of analysis. Nevertheless, mankind is not so very kind these days, but we find that individual men and women of genius have benefited all of us immensely. This chapter must be listened to and more than just heard repeatedly. It’s a masterpiece of writing. I most highly recommend this audiobook. I hope you will enjoy as much as I have in its appreciation of one of our greatest poets, Willian Wordsworth. Happy listening!

brings it all together on wordsworth's life

learned so much about a poet I was introduced to sixth grade in Jacksonville Florida

Enlightening and well narrated

Jonathan Bates is an exceptionally skilled writer. HIs scholarship is impeccable and his breadth of knowledge impressive. Full disclosure - I am an English teacher and taught a tenth grade course in British Lit for many years (I imagine such a class is long gone). I dutifully addressed the “Romantic Poets” but always felt that I did not have a full grasp of what the “Romantic Movement” actually was. I still don’t as Bates has convinced me of its elasticity as it applies to literature immediately before, during and immediately after Wordsworth’s life. Nevertheless, I learned a great deal about how Wordsworth’s life experiences helped to produce his profoundly rich decade of inspired poems. I also appreciated the digressions Bates selectively made with persons and historical events that influenced Wordsworth. Focusing on this period and the “radical Wordsworth” was a wise choice as the latter half or more of his life seems quite unremarkable. I have now listened to two of Bates works and look forward to a third which is also free with a subscription.

Radical Wordswoth makes its case

The book gathers momentum as it goes along, reaching its highest moments in its late chapters arguing that Wordsworth is indeed our contemporary in his attempt via poetry to teach us to love the earth, our only dwelling. The author makes a powerful case for Wordsworth’s contemporary importance through his influence on Ruskin, Arnold, and Americans like Emerson and, most unexpectedly, John Muir. Also a powerful case for the enduring power of poetry, which does, in fact, make things happen. The reader is mostly good, his British accent appropriate to the subject, though he unfortunately mispronounces the names of Southey and Yeats, the former frequently throughout.