The Hidden Wordsworth

William Wordsworth's version of his youth in The Prelude, an epic-length poem "on the growth of my own mind," is certainly well known, but what does it really tell us about the poet's youth and early adulthood? Kenneth R. Johnston, who has devoted much of his academic career to the romantic poets, particularly Wordsworth, sifts through the other available evidence and demonstrates that the poet suppressed as much, perhaps more, of his personal history as he revealed in the deliberate crafting of his literary identity.

The most fascinating material for some readers will be Johnston's (ably supported) hypotheses about several periods during the 1790s when Wordsworth's presence cannot be fully accounted for. For nearly half of 1793, for example, the poet is supposed to be "quietly sitting down" in Wales, but there's good reason to suspect that he is actually in Paris, re-establishing contact with his French mistress, Annette Vallon. Then, six years later, he and his sister disappear in southern Germany for over a month--and the secret account books of the home secretary, who controlled funds for the secret service, show a payment made out to a "Wordsworth" shortly afterwards.

Was one of the founders of English romanticism actually a British spy? Admittedly, we may never know for sure. But Johnston's account is very convincingly constructed; it fits what can be known without requiring great leaps of imagination. As such, it forces us to re-evaluate everything we've ever believed about Wordsworth and his poems. Fortunately, Johnston is as capable a literary critic as he is biographer.