William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet born in 1770 in the Lake District of England. He was greatly influenced by experiences traveling through Europe as a student and supportive of the French Revolution. He befriended Samuel Taylor Coleridge and together they produced the influential Lyrical Ballads in 1798. Wordsworth found inspiration in nature and believed that poetry originated from powerful emotions recollected through memory. He saw children and rural people as purer representations of human nature and celebrated their lives in his poetry.