William Wordsworth: The Prelude or Growth of a Poet's Mind

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) was born in Cockermouth, Cumberland. In 1798 he published the Lyrical Ballads with Coleridge, settling shortly after in Dove Cottage, Grasmere with his sister, Dorothy. He died at Rydal Mount in 1850, shortly before the posthumous publication of that landmark of English Romanticism, The Prelude.

Seamus Heaney was born in County Derry in Northern Ireland. Death of a Naturalist, his first collection of poems, appeared in 1966, and was followed by poetry, criticism and translations which established him as the leading poet of his generation. In 1995 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, and twice won the Whitbread Book of the Year, for The Spirit Level (1996) and Beowulf (1999). Stepping Stones, a book of interviews conducted by Dennis O'Driscoll, appeared in 2008; Human Chain, his last volume of poems, was awarded the 2010 Forward Prize for Best Collection. He died in 2013.