Sudha Murty

Sudha Murthy (also spelled Sudha Murty; ne Kulkarni (Kannada: )) is an Indian social worker
and author. Mrs. Murthy began her professional career as a computer scientist and engineer, currently she is the
chairperson of the Infosys Foundation and member of public healthcare initiative of the Gates Foundation.[1][2]
In addition, she has established several orphanages, participated in rural development efforts, and supported the
movement to provide all government schools in Karnataka with state-of-the-art computer and library facilities.[3]
[4]
Mrs. Murthy also teaches computer science and composes fiction. Dollar Sose (English: Dollar Daughter-inLaw), a novel originally authored in Kannada and later translated into English as Dollar Bahu, was adapted as a
televised dramatic series by Zee TV in 2001.[5]

Early life
Sudha Murthy was born on August 19, 1950 in Shiggaon in northern Karnataka, India. The daughter of a
reputed local physician Dr. S.R. Kulkarni, Mrs. Murty and her siblings were raised by her parents and maternal
grandparents of the Deshastha Brahmin Kadim Diwan-Melgiri-Ron family.[6][7][8] These childhood experiences
form the historical basis for her first notable work entitled How I Taught my Grandmother to Read & Other
Stories.[9] Two institutions of higher learning, the H.R. Kadim Diwan Building housing the Computer Science &
Engineering (CSE) department at IIT Kanpur[10][11] and the Narayan Rao Melgiri Memorial National Law
Library at NLSIU,[6] were both endowed and inaugurated by the Infosys Foundation.
Mrs. Murthy completed a B.E. in Electrical Engineering from the B.V.B. College of Engineering & Technology,
standing first in her class and receiving a gold medal from the Chief Minister of Karnataka. Thereafter, she
completed a M.E. in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Science, standing first in her class and
receiving a gold medal from the Indian Institute of Engineers.[12]
After graduation, Mrs. Murthy held the distinct honor of being the first female engineer hired at India's largest
auto manufacturer TATA Engineering and Locomotive Company or TELCO (now the multinational Tata
Motors, which owns Jaguar Land Rover and Daewoo commercial vehicles). The backstory reveals that Mrs.
Murthy had written a postcard to then company Chairman JRD Tata complaining of the "men only" gender bias
at TELCO. As a result, she was granted a special interview and hired immediately on her merits. Mrs. Murthy
later met her husband N.R. Narayana Murthy while employed as an engineer at TELCO in Pune;[13] ironically,
the couple's matchmaker G.K. Prasanna would later become the Global Head of Technology at Wipro, a
competitor to Infosys in global IT services.[9][14]

Infosys Foundation
Mrs. Murthy who heads as the chairperson of Infosys Foundation as well as the seed investor behind Infosys
and venture capital firm Catamaran Ventures.[15] In 1981, Mrs. Murthy invested Rs 10,000 ($250) to fund the
then fledgling software start-up called Infosys Technologies. Thirty years later, at her husband N.R. Narayana
Murthy's exit from Infosys in 2011,[16] that initial investment has been successfully managed into Infosys
Foundation holdings valued at over Rs 30,000 crore ($7.5B).[17] This growth translates into a 30-year annual
return of 78%,[18] making Sudha Murthy one of the most successful institutional investment managers in the
world surpassing Warren Buffett's 36-year Berkshire Hathaway annual return of 22%,[19] Peter Lynch's 13-year
Magellan Fund annual return of 29%,[20] and George Soros's 32-year Quantum Fund annual return of 30%.[21]
Like other noteworthy charitable foundations (e.g., the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the
Gates Foundation; see List of wealthiest charitable foundations), the Infosys Foundation distributes funds for

the betterment of Indian society through grants to various rural development, public health and educational
projects (as detailed above) that promote socioeconomic growth and provide jobs for Indians. The capital is not
hoarded or used for personal monetary gain as commonly observed in other Indian business legacies as
indicated by the Bain & Company report on the substandard state of philanthropic giving in India[22][23] and
Indian black money hoarding in Swiss banks as revealed by Wikileaks's Julian Assange.[24][25]
This philanthropy explains why, despite their high net worth, the Murthy family is widely known to live a
simple middle-class lifestyle.[26][27]

Awards
In 2004, Sudha Murthy was presented with the Raja-Lakshmi Award "in recognition of her outstanding
contribution to social work" by the Sri Raja-Lakshmi Foundation in Chennai.[28]
In 2006, Mrs. Murthy was awarded the Padma Shri, the fourth highest-ranking civilian award from the
Government of India, and received an honorary doctorate for her contributions in the spheres of social work,
philanthropy, and education.[29]
In 2011, Mrs. Murthy and Justice Santosh Hegde were conferred honorary LL.D (Doctor of Laws) degrees for
their contributions to promoting formal legal education and scholarship in India.[30] She was the recipient of the
R.K. Narayana's Award for Literature and the Padma Shri in 2006."

Personal details
Mrs. Murthy is the wife of software industrialist N.R. Narayana Murthy. She is the sister of Bangalore-based
obstetrician Dr. Sunanda Kulkarni, Boston-based Jayshree Deshpande (spouse of multibillionaire telecom
tycoon Gururaj Deshpande) and renowned Caltech astrophysicist Shrinivas Kulkarni.[31] Through her mother's
side, she descends from Sardar Melgiri Pandit of the Maratha Empire who battled the invading Mongol hordes
at the Siege of Bijapur (168586) in the War of 27 years.[6][32][33]
The Murthy couple has two grown children, Akshata and Rohan. In August 2009, Akshata married Stanford
Business School classmate Rishi Sunak in a high-profile wedding ceremony held at the Leela Palace Bangalore.
Akshata is a fashion entrepreneur[34] and was formerly with Siderian Ventures, a clean technology venture
capital firm located in San Francisco.[35] Mr. Sunak, an Oxford graduate and Fulbright scholar, is a partner at the
UK-based charitable hedge fund TCI, The Children's Investment Fund.[36]
Rohan Murthy is a Cornell graduate and received a Microsoft Fellowship to pursue advanced doctoral work in
computer science at Harvard.[37] In June 2011, Rohan married Lakshmi Venu Srinivasan, heiress to the TVS
Group dynasty via her father TVS Motors Chairman Venu Srinivasan.[38]

Bibliography
Sudha Murthy is a prolific fiction author. She has published several books, mainly through Penguin, that
espouse her philosophical views on charity, hospitality and self-realization through fictional narratives. Some of
her more better-known works include:
How I Taught My Grandmother To Read & Other Stories
Wise & Otherwise: A Salute to Life
The Bird with Golden Wings
Gently Falls the Bakula

Dollar Bahu
Mahashweta
Old Man And His God
Magic Drum & other Favourite Stories
Fasal Cut
A Wedding in Russia
Sweet Hospitality
Her most publicized works, How I Taught My Grandmother to Read & Other Stories has been translated into 15
languages including English, Hindi and Assamese. The Assamese books are titled Aitak Moi Kidore Porhiboloi
Shikalo and Bhina Jan Bhinna Mon: Jiwan Tomak Abhibadan and are published by Bhabani Print &
Publications and translated by Anjan Sarma.[39]

William D. Ellis, Novelist

1967 cleveland arts prize for Literature
Although William Donahue Ellis was born to be a writer, his readers might be forgiven if they assume he
once received formal training in other disciplines. Seemingly part archaeologist, part anthropologist, part
genealogist, and part psychologist, Ellis mined the centuries to unearth the raw material he would mold into his
fiction and nonfiction books. With no instrument more elaborate than a typewriter, he managed to create popular
regional histories and award-winning volumes of historical fiction that brought Ohios past to life in a manner
that was not just informative and entertaining, but as vivid as an epic film.
Born in 1918 in Concord, Massachusetts, Ellis began writing at the age of 12, at the urging of an elementaryschool teacher who early on discerned his talent. Over the course of the next seven decades his teachers
judgment would be validated again and again by readers and critics alike.
Ellis began delving into Ohios history quite by accident, during a 1946 visit to his wifes family in suburban
Lakewood. He showed a sample of his writing to a local advertising agency, which hired him immediately and
assigned him to write the scripts for a radio program called The Ohio Story. The series of showsvignettes
recounting events and milestones in the states development since settlers first arrivedwould continue for the
next 14 years.
Elliss ongoing research for The Ohio Story revealed such an abundance of fascinating material that he
eventually used much of it as the foundation for a trilogy of novels: Bounty Lands, Jonathan Blair: Bounty
Lands Lawyer and The Brooks Legend. Each of the books reflected the reality of life on the frontier at a time
when Ohio was considered the West and the hardships of daily existence far outweighed the pleasures. Ellis
portrayed the vicissitudes of pioneer existence with an unsparing attention to detail, reminding complacent mid20th century Ohioans of the strength and courage of their forebears. Each of his novels appeared on best-seller
lists, and the trilogy itself eventually earned its author a Pulitzer Prize nomination.
In 1952, Ellis founded Editorial, Inc., which specialized in commissioned histories of Ohio corporations and
institutions. With other local writers he produced or oversaw the completion of dozens of volumes, including
histories of, among others, Hawken School and the J.M Smucker Company. At the same time, Ellis worked on
individual projects that looked back even further in time. His The Cuyahoga (Holt, Rinehart and Winston,

1966), for example, is still considered the definitive account of the river and its historical importance to
Cleveland and northeastern Ohio.
William Ellis served in the Army during World War II, commanding a rifle company in the South Pacific.
Somehow, he continued to write even in the midst of battle. In fact, he was already working on a history of the
77th Infantry Division when his company was ordered to storm the beaches of Guam. He lost the manuscript
during the invasiona disaster that was eclipsed only when he was later wounded by machinegun fire in the
Philippines and had to spend a full year in convalescence to recover his health.
Yet something good came out of that painful episode after all. Ellis did not write about his war experiences, but
they certainly informed the novels he wrote about the tenacious pioneers of early Ohio. Indeed, in many ways
the most important recurring theme in his books is the same one he encountered during the war: quite simply,
the triumph of survival.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, FRS (6 August 1809 6 October 1892) was Poet Laureate of the
United Kingdom during much of Queen Victoria's reign and remains one of the most popular poets in the
English language.
Tennyson excelled at penning short lyrics, such as "In the Valley of Cauteretz", "Break, Break, Break", "The
Charge of the Light Brigade", "Tears, Idle Tears" and "Crossing the Bar". Much of his verse was based on
classical mythological themes, such as Ulysses, although In Memoriam A.H.H. was written to commemorate his
best friend Arthur Hallam, a fellow poet and fellow student at Trinity College, Cambridge, who was engaged to
Tennyson's sister, but died from a brain haemorrhage before they could marry. Tennyson also wrote some
notable blank verse including Idylls of the King, "Ulysses," and "Tithonus." During his career, Tennyson
attempted drama, but his plays enjoyed little success.
A number of phrases from Tennyson's work have become commonplaces of the English language, including
"Nature, red in tooth and claw", "'Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all", "Theirs not
to reason why, / Theirs but to do and die", "My strength is as the strength of ten, / Because my heart is pure",
"Knowledge comes, but Wisdom lingers", and "The old order changeth, yielding place to new". He is the ninth
most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.[1]
Early life

Tennyson was born in Somersby, Lincolnshire, a rector's son and fourth of 12 children.[2] He derived from a
middle-class line of Tennysons, but also had noble and royal ancestry.[3]
His father, George Clayton Tennyson (17781831), was rector of Somersby (18071831), also rector of
Benniworth and Bag Enderby, and vicar of Grimsby (1815). The rector was the elder of two sons, but was
disinherited at an early age by his father, the landowner George Tennyson (17501835) (owner of Bayons
Manor and Usselby Hall), in favour of his younger brother Charles, who later took the name Charles Tennyson
d'Eyncourt. Rev. George Clayton Tennyson raised a large family and "was a man of superior abilities and varied
attainments, who tried his hand with fair success in architecture, painting, music, and poetry. He was
comfortably well off for a country clergyman and his shrewd money management enabled the family to spend
summers at Mablethorpe and Skegness, on the eastern coast of England."[3] Alfred Tennyson's mother, Elizabeth
Fytche (17811865), was the daughter of Stephen Fytche (17341799), vicar of St. James Church, Louth (1764)

and rector of Withcall (1780), a small village between Horncastle and Louth. Tennyson's father "carefully
attended to the education and training of his children."
Tennyson and two of his elder brothers were writing poetry in their teens, and a collection of poems by all three
were published locally when Alfred was only 17. One of those brothers, Charles Tennyson Turner later married
Louisa Sellwood, the younger sister of Alfred's future wife; the other was Frederick Tennyson. Another of
Tennyson's brothers, Edward Tennyson, was institutionalised at a private asylum, where he died.

Education and first publication

Tennyson was first a student of Louth Grammar School for four years (18161820)[3] and then attended
Scaitcliffe School, Englefield Green and King Edward VI Grammar School, Louth. He entered Trinity College,
Cambridge in 1827,[4] where he joined a secret society called the Cambridge Apostles. At Cambridge Tennyson
met Arthur Henry Hallam, who became his closest friend. His first publication was a collection of "his boyish
rhymes and those of his elder brother Charles" entitled Poems by Two Brothers published in 1827.[3]
In 1829 he was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his first pieces, "Timbuctoo".[5][6]
Reportedly, "it was thought to be no slight honour for a young man of twenty to win the chancellor's gold
medal."[3] He published his first solo collection of poems, Poems Chiefly Lyrical in 1830. "Claribel" and
"Mariana", which later took their place among Tennyson's most celebrated poems, were included in this
volume. Although decried by some critics as overly sentimental, his verse soon proved popular and brought
Tennyson to the attention of well-known writers of the day, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Return to Lincolnshire and second publication

In the spring of 1831 Tennyson's father died, requiring him to leave Cambridge before taking his degree. He
returned to the rectory, where he was permitted to live for another six years, and shared responsibility for his
widowed mother and the family. Arthur Hallam came to stay with his family during the summer and became
engaged to Tennyson's sister, Emilia Tennyson.
In 1833, Tennyson published his second book of poetry, which included his well-known poem, The Lady of
Shalott. The volume met heavy criticism, which so discouraged Tennyson that he did not publish again for 10
years, although he continued to write. That same year, Hallam died suddenly and unexpectedly after suffering a
cerebral haemorrhage while on vacation in Vienna.[7] Hallam's sudden and unexpected death in 1833 had a
profound impact on Tennyson, and inspired several masterpieces, including "In the Valley of Cauteretz" and In
Memoriam A.H.H., a long poem detailing the 'Way of the Soul'.[7]
Tennyson and his family were allowed to stay in the rectory for some time, but later moved to High Beach,
Essex in 1837. An unwise investment in an ecclesiastical wood-carving enterprise soon led to the loss of much
of the family fortune. Tennyson then moved to London, and lived for a time at Chapel House, Twickenham.

Third publication
In 1842, while living modestly in London, Tennyson published two volumes of Poems, of which the first
included works already published and the second was made up almost entirely of new poems. They met with
immediate success. Poems from this collection, such as Locksley Hall, "Tithonus", and "Ulysses" have met
enduring fame. The Princess: A Medley, a satire on women's education, which came out in 1847, was also
popular for its lyrics. W. S. Gilbert later adapted and parodied the piece twice: in The Princess (1870) and in
Princess Ida (1884).

It was in 1850 that Tennyson reached the pinnacle of his career, finally publishing his masterpiece, In
Memoriam A.H.H., dedicated to Hallam. Later the same year he was appointed Poet Laureate, succeeding
William Wordsworth. In the same year (on 13 June), Tennyson married Emily Sellwood, whom he had known
since childhood, in the village of Shiplake. They had two sons, Hallam Tennyson (b. 11 August 1852) named
after his friend and Lionel (b. 16 March 1854).

Poet Laureate
After Wordsworth's death in 1850, and Samuel Rogers' refusal, Tennyson was appointed to the position of Poet
Laureate, which he held until his own death in 1892, by far the longest tenure of any laureate before or since.
He fulfilled the requirements of this position by turning out appropriate but often uninspired verse, such as a
poem of greeting to Alexandra of Denmark when she arrived in Britain to marry the future King Edward VII. In
1855, Tennyson produced one of his best known works, "The Charge of the Light Brigade", a dramatic tribute to
the British cavalrymen involved in an ill-advised charge on 25 October 1854, during the Crimean War. Other
esteemed works written in the post of Poet Laureate include Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington and
Ode Sung at the Opening of the International Exhibition.
Queen Victoria was an ardent admirer of Tennyson's work, and in 1884 created him Baron Tennyson, of
Aldworth in the County of Sussex and of Freshwater in the Isle of Wight. Tennyson initially declined a
baronetcy in 1865 and 1868 (when tendered by Disraeli), finally accepting a peerage in 1883 at Gladstone's
earnest solicitation. He took his seat in the House of Lords on 11 March 1884.[3]
Tennyson also wrote a substantial quantity of non-official political verse, from the bellicose "Form, Riflemen,
Form", on the French crisis of 1859, to "Steersman, be not precipitate in thine act/of steering", deploring
Gladstone's Home Rule Bill.
Virginia Woolf wrote a play called Freshwater, showing Tennyson as host to his friends Julia Margaret
Cameron and G.F.Watts.[8]
Tennyson was the first to be raised to a British Peerage for his writing. A passionate man with some peculiarities
of nature, he was never particularly comfortable as a peer, and it is widely held that he took the peerage in order
to secure a future for his son Hallam.[citation needed]
Thomas Edison made sound recordings of Tennyson reading his own poetry, late in his life. They include
recordings of The Charge of the Light Brigade, and excerpts from "The splendour falls" (from The Princess),
"Come into the garden" (from Maud), "Ask me no more", "Ode on the death of the Duke of Wellington",
"Charge of the Heavy Brigade", and "Lancelot and Elaine"; the sound quality is as poor as wax cylinder
recordings usually are.
Towards the end of his life Tennyson revealed that his "religious beliefs also defied convention, leaning towards
agnosticism and pandeism":[9] Famously, he wrote in In Memoriam: "There lives more faith in honest doubt,
believe me, than in half the creeds." [The context directly contradicts the apparent meaning of this quote.] In
Maud, 1855, he wrote: "The churches have killed their Christ." In "Locksley Hall Sixty Years After," Tennyson
wrote: "Christian love among the churches look'd the twin of heathen hate." In his play, Becket, he wrote: "We
are self-uncertain creatures, and we may, Yea, even when we know not, mix our spites and private hates with
our defence of Heaven." Tennyson recorded in his Diary (p. 127): "I believe in Pantheism of a sort." His son's
biography confirms that Tennyson was not an orthodox Christian, noting that Tennyson praised Giordano Bruno
and Spinoza on his deathbed, saying of Bruno, "His view of God is in some ways mine," in 1892.[10]

Tennyson continued writing into his eighties. He died on 6 October 1892 at Aldworth, aged 83. He was buried
at Westminster Abbey. A memorial was erected in All Saints' Church, Freshwater. His last words were; "Oh that
press will have me now!".[11]
He was succeeded as 2nd Baron Tennyson by his son, Hallam, who produced an authorised biography of his
father in 1897, and was later the second Governor-General of Australia.

The art of Tennyson's poetry

Tennyson used a wide range of subject matter, ranging from medieval legends to classical myths and from
domestic situations to observations of nature, as source material for his poetry. The influence of John Keats and
other Romantic poets published before and during his childhood is evident from the richness of his imagery and
descriptive writing. He also handled rhythm masterfully. The insistent beat of Break, Break, Break emphasises
the relentless sadness of the subject matter. Tennyson's use of the musical qualities of words to emphasise his
rhythms and meanings is sensitive. The language of "I come from haunts of coot and hern" lilts and ripples like
the brook in the poem and the last two lines of "Come down O maid from yonder mountain height" illustrate his
telling combination of onomatopoeia, alliteration and assonance:
The moan of doves in immemorial elms
And murmuring of innumerable bees.
Tennyson was a craftsman who polished and revised his manuscripts extensively. Few poets have used such a
variety of styles with such an exact understanding of metre; like many Victorian poets, he experimented in
adapting the quantitative metres of Greek and Latin poetry to English. He reflects the Victorian period of his
maturity in his feeling for order and his tendency towards moralising and self-indulgent melancholy. He also
reflects a concern common among Victorian writers in being troubled by the conflict between religious faith and
expanding scientific knowledge. Like many writers who write a great deal over a long time, he can be pompous
or banal, but his personality rings throughout all his works work that reflects a grand and special variability in
its quality. Tennyson possessed the strongest poetic power; he put great length into many works, most famous of
which are Maud and Idylls of the King, the latter one of literature's treatments of the legend of King Arthur and
The Knights of the Round Table.

Homoerotic imagery
The poem In Memoriam about a mans love for another man includes sexual imagery; for example, the poet
compares his sorrow to the sorrow of a loving widower who misses his late wife in bed.
Tears of the widower, when he sees
A late-lost form that sleep reveals,
And moves his doubtful arms, and feels
Her place is empty, fall like these;[12]
This is not a unique example and material that can be interpreted as homoerotic is widespread in Tennysons
work. There has been speculation that Tennyson may have experienced homosexual feelings for his friend,
though there is no question that he was strongly attracted to women. If Tennyson had bisexual feelings there is
no firm evidence that he acted on them.[13]

Partial list of works

From Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (1830):

o The Dying Swan

o The Kraken
o Mariana

Lady Clara Vere de Vere (1832)

From Poems (1833):

o The Lotos-Eaters
o The Lady of Shalott (1832, 1842) three versions painted by J.W. Waterhouse (1888, 1894 and
1916). Also put to music by Loreena McKennitt on her album The Visit (1991).
o The Palace of Art

St. Simeon Stylites (1833)

From Poems (1842):

o Locksley Hall
o Tithonus
o Vision of Sin [14]
o The Two Voices (1834)
o "Ulysses" (1833)

From The Princess; A Medley (1847)

o "The Princess"
o Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal it later appeared as a song in the film Vanity Fair, with musical
arrangement by Mychael Danna
o "Tears, Idle Tears"

In Memoriam A.H.H. (1849)

Ring Out, Wild Bells (1850)

The Eagle (1851)

The Sister's Shame[15]

From Maud; A Monodrama (1855/1856)

o Maud
o The Charge of the Light Brigade (1854) an early recording exists of Tennyson reading this.

From Enoch Arden and Other Poems (1862/1864)

o Enoch Arden
o The Brook contains the line "For men may come and men may go, But I go on for ever" which
inspired the naming of a men's club in New York City.

Flower in the crannied wall (1869)

The Window Song cycle with Arthur Sullivan. (1871)

Harold (1876) began a revival of interest in King Harold

Idylls of the King (composed 18331874)

Locksley Hall Sixty Years After (1886)

Crossing the Bar (1889)

The Foresters a play with incidental music by Arthur Sullivan (1891)

Kapiolani (published after his death by Hallam Tennyson)[16]

William Wordsworth
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 the 1798 joint publication
Lyrical Ballads.
Wordsworth's magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude, a semiautobiographical poem of his
early years which he revised and expanded a number of times. It was posthumously titled and published, prior
to which it was generally known as the poem "to Coleridge". Wordsworth was Britain's Poet Laureate from
1843 until his death in 1850.

Early life
Main article: Early life of William Wordsworth
The second of five children born to John Wordsworth and Ann Cookson, William Wordsworth was born on 7
April 1770 in Wordsworth House in Cockermouth, Cumberland[1]part of the scenic region in northwest
England, the Lake District. His sister, the poet and diarist Dorothy Wordsworth, to whom he was close all his
life, was born the following year, and the two were baptised together. They had three other siblings: Richard, the
eldest, who became a lawyer; John, born after Dorothy, who went to sea and died in 1805 when the ship of
which he was Master, the Earl of Abergavenny, was wrecked off the south coast of England; and Christopher,

the youngest, who entered the Church and rose to be Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.[2] Their father was a
legal representative of James Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale and, through his connections, lived in a large
mansion in the small town. Wordsworth, as with his siblings, had little involvement with their father, and they
would be distant from him until his death in 1783.[3]
Wordsworth's father, although rarely present, did teach him poetry, including that of Milton, Shakespeare and
Spenser, in addition to allowing his son to rely on his own father's library. Along with spending time reading in
Cockermouth, Wordsworth would also stay at his mother's parents house in Penrith, Cumberland. At Penrith,
Wordsworth was exposed to the moors. Wordsworth could not get along with his grandparents and his uncle,
and his hostile interactions with them distressed him to the point of contemplating suicide.[4]
After the death of their mother, in 1778, John Wordsworth sent William to Hawkshead Grammar School in
Lancashire and Dorothy to live with relatives in Yorkshire; she and William would not meet again for another
nine years. Although Hawkshead was Wordsworth's first serious experience with education, he had been taught
to read by his mother and had attended a tiny school of low quality in Cockermouth. After the Cockermouth
school, he was sent to a school in Penrith for the children of upper-class families and taught by Ann Birkett, a
woman who insisted on instilling in her students traditions that included pursuing both scholarly and local
activities, especially the festivals around Easter, May Day, and Shrove Tuesday. Wordsworth was taught both
the Bible and the Spectator, but little else. It was at the school that Wordsworth was to meet the Hutchinsons,
including Mary, who would be his future wife.[5]
Wordsworth made his debut as a writer in 1787 when he published a sonnet in The European Magazine. That
same year he began attending St John's College, Cambridge, and received his B.A. degree in 1791.[6] He
returned to Hawkshead for his first two summer holidays, and often spent later holidays on walking tours,
visiting places famous for the beauty of their landscape. In 1790, he took a walking tour of Europe, during
which he toured the Alps extensively, and visited nearby areas of France, Switzerland, and Italy.

Major works

Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems (1798)

o "Simon Lee"
o "We are Seven"
o "Lines Written in Early Spring"
o "Expostulation and Reply"
o "The Tables Turned"
o "The Thorn"
o "Lines Composed A Few Miles above Tintern Abbey"

Lyrical Ballads, with Other Poems (1800)

o Preface to the Lyrical Ballads
o "Strange fits of passion have I known"[14]

o "She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways"[14]

o "Three years she grew"[14]
o "A Slumber Did my Spirit Seal"[14]
o "I travelled among unknown men"[14]
o "Lucy Gray"
o "The Two April Mornings"
o "Nutting"
o "The Ruined Cottage"
o "Michael"
o "The Kitten At Play"

Poems, in Two Volumes (1807)

o "Resolution and Independence"
o "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" Also known as "Daffodils"
o "My Heart Leaps Up"
o "Ode: Intimations of Immortality"
o "Ode to Duty"
o "The Solitary Reaper"
o "Elegiac Stanzas"
o "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802"
o "London, 1802"
o "The World Is Too Much with Us"

Guide to the Lakes (1810)

The Excursion (1814)

Laodamia (1815, 1845)

The Prelude (1850)

The Poet Laureate and other honours

Wordsworth received an honorary Doctor of Civil Law degree in 1838 from Durham University, and the same
honour from Oxford University the next year.[7] In 1842 the government awarded him a civil list pension
amounting to 300 a year. With the death in 1843 of Robert Southey, Wordsworth became the Poet Laureate. He
initially refused the honour, saying he was too old, but accepted when Prime Minister Robert Peel assured him
"you shall have nothing required of you" (he became the only laureate to write no official poetry). When his
daughter, Dora, died in 1847, his production of poetry came to a standstill.

Thomas Campbell (poet)

Thomas Campbell (27 July 1777 15 June 1844) was a Scottish poet chiefly remembered for his sentimental
poetry dealing specially with human affairs. He was also one of the initiators of a plan to found what became
the University of London. In 1799, he wrote "The Pleasures of Hope" a traditional 18th century survey in heroic
couplets. He also produced several stirring patriotic war songs"Ye Mariners of England", "The Soldier's
Dream", "Hohenlinden" and in 1801, "The Battle of Mad and Strange Turkish Princes".[1]
Early life

Born in Glasgow, Thomas Campbell was the youngest son of Alexander Campbell, of the Campbells of Kirnan,
Argyll. His father belonged to a Glasgow firm trading in Virginia, and lost his money in consequence of the
American Revolutionary War. Campbell, who was educated at the Glasgow High School and University of
Glasgow, won prizes for classics and for verse-writing. He spent the holidays as a tutor in the western
Highlands. His poem "Glenara" and the ballad of "Lord Ullin's Daughter" owe their origin to a visit to Mull. In
May 1797 he went to Edinburgh to attend lectures on law. He supported himself by private teaching and by
writing, towards which he was helped by Dr Robert Anderson, the editor of the British Poets. Among his
contemporaries in Edinburgh were Sir Walter Scott, Henry Brougham, Francis Jeffrey, Dr Thomas Brown, John
Leyden and James Grahame. These early days in Edinburgh influenced such works as "The Wounded Hussar",
"The Dirge of Wallace" and the "Epistle to Three Ladies".
Career

In 1799, six months after the publication of the Lyrical Ballads of Wordsworth and Coleridge, "The Pleasures of
Hope" was published. It is a rhetorical and didactic poem in the taste of his time, and owed much to the fact that
it dealt with topics near to men's hearts, with the French Revolution, the partition of Poland and with negro
slavery. Its success was instantaneous, but Campbell was deficient in energy and perseverance and did not
follow it up. He went abroad in June 1800 without any very definite aim, visited Gottlieb Friedrich Klopstock at
Hamburg, and made his way to Regensburg, which was taken by the French three days after his arrival. He
found refuge in a Scottish monastery. Some of his best lyrics, "Hohenlinden", "Ye Mariners of England" and
"The Soldier's Dream", belong to his German tour. He spent the winter in Altona, where he met an Irish exile,
Anthony McCann, whose history suggested The Exile of Erin.
He had at that time the intention of writing an epic on Edinburgh to be entitled "The Queen of the North". On
the outbreak of war between Denmark and England he hurried home, the "Battle of the Baltic" being drafted
soon after. At Edinburgh he was introduced to the first Lord Minto, who took him in the next year to London as
occasional secretary. In June 1803 appeared a new edition of the "Pleasures of Hope", to which some lyrics
were added.

In 1803 Campbell married his second cousin, Matilda Sinclair, and settled in London. He was well received in
Whig society, especially at Holland House. His prospects, however, were slight when in 1805 he received a
government pension of 200. In that year the Campbells removed to Sydenham. Campbell was at this time
regularly employed on the Star newspaper, for which he translated the foreign news. In 1809 he published a
narrative poem in the Spenserian stanza, Gertrude of Wyoming referring to the Wyoming Valley of
Pennsylvania and the Wyoming Valley Massacre with which were printed some of his best lyrics. He was
slow and fastidious in composition, and the poem suffered from overelaboration. Francis Jeffrey wrote to the
author:
"Your timidity or fastidiousness, or some other knavish quality, will not let you give your conceptions glowing,
and bold, and powerful, as they present themselves; but you must chasten, and refine, and soften them, forsooth,
till half their nature and grandeur is chiselled away from them. Believe me, the world will never know how truly
you are a great and original poet till you venture to cast before it some of the rough pearls of your fancy."
In 1812 he delivered a series of lectures on poetry in London at the Royal Institution; and he was urged by Sir
Walter Scott to become a candidate for the chair of literature at Edinburgh University. In 1814 he went to Paris,
making there the acquaintance of the elder Schlegel, of Baron Cuvier and others. His pecuniary anxieties were
relieved in 1815 by a legacy of 4000. He continued to occupy himself with his Specimens of the British Poets,
the design of which had been projected years before. The work was published in 1819. It contains on the whole
an admirable selection with short lives of the poets, and prefixed to it an essay on poetry containing much
valuable criticism. In 1820 he accepted the editorship of the New Monthly Magazine, and in the same year made
another tour in Germany. Four years later appeared his "Theodric", a not very successful poem of domestic life.

Later life
He took an active share in the foundation of the University of London, visiting Berlin to inquire into the
German system of education, and making recommendations which were adopted by Lord Brougham. He was
elected Lord Rector of Glasgow University (18261829) in competition against Sir Walter Scott. Campbell
retired from the editorship of the New Monthly Magazine in 1830, and a year later made an unsuccessful
venture with The Metropolitan Magazine. He had championed the cause of the Poles in "The Pleasures of
Hope", and the news of the capture of Warsaw by the Russians in 1831 affected him as if it had been the deepest
of personal calamities. "Poland preys on my heart night and day," he wrote in one of his letters, and his
sympathy found a practical expression in the foundation in London of the Literary Association of the Friends of
Poland. In 1834 he travelled to Paris and Algiers, where he wrote his Letters from the South (printed 1837). The
small production of Campbell may be partly explained by his domestic calamities. His wife died in 1828. Of his
two sons, one died in infancy and the other became insane. His own health suffered, and he gradually withdrew
from public life. He died at Boulogne 15 June 1844 and was buried 3 July 1844[2] Westminster Abbey at Poet's
Corner.
Campbell's other works include a Life of Mrs Siddons (1842), and a narrative poem, "The Pilgrim of Glencoe"
(1842). See The Life and Letters of Thomas Campbell (3 vols., 1849), edited by William Beattie, M.D.; Literary
Reminiscences and Memoirs of Thomas Campbell (1860), by Cyrus Redding; The Complete Poetical Works Of
Thomas Campbell (1860); The Poetical Works of Thomas Campbell (1875), in the Aldine Edition of the British
Poets, edited by the Rev. V. Alfred Hill, with a sketch of the poet's life by William Allingham; and the Oxford
Edition of the Complete Works of Thomas Campbell (1908), edited by J. Logie Robertson. See also Thomas
Campbell by J. Cuthbert Hadden, (Edinburgh: Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier, 1899, Famous Scots Series), and
a selection by Lewis Campbell (1904) for the Golden Treasury Series.