19 pages 38 minutes read

William Wordsworth

The World is Too Much with Us

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2012

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Background

Historical Context

Shortly before and throughout Wordsworth’s career as a poet, England was the scene of an immense economic and cultural shift that would forever alter its citizens’ way of life. Spanning from the mid-18th to the mid-19th century, the First Industrial Revolution fundamentally altered the landscape and lifestyle of English people and later spread to other countries like the United States and France. The Industrial Revolution saw the development of new technology like the spinning jenny, which greatly assisted textile manufacturers, and the steam powered locomotive, which accelerated transportation and made trade between different cities and even countries much more efficient. There was an increased demand for labor in coal mining to support these new locomotives and a newly developed railroad system, and as a result of these sudden economic changes, England began a period of rapid urbanization. English citizens left their rural homes in droves in order to find work in major cities where manufacturing was booming.

While the Industrial Revolution greatly improved England’s economy and saw the rise of a more powerful working middle class, not all of its changes were for the best. The rapidly increasing population of cities meant overcrowding, pollution, and a lack of clean water, and lower-class workers in the new factories were seldom paid enough to survive in their new living situations.

Related Titles

By William Wordsworth

Study Guide
Guide cover image

A Complaint

William Wordsworth

Plot Summary
Guide cover placeholder

A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal

William Wordsworth

Study Guide
Guide cover image

Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802

William Wordsworth

Study Guide
Guide cover image

Daffodils

William Wordsworth

Study Guide
Guide cover image

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

William Wordsworth

Study Guide
Guide cover image

Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey

William Wordsworth

Study Guide
Guide cover image

London, 1802

William Wordsworth

Plot Summary
Guide cover placeholder

Lyrical Ballads

William Wordsworth, Michael Schmidt, Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Study Guide
Guide cover image

My Heart Leaps Up

William Wordsworth

Study Guide
Guide cover image

Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

William Wordsworth

Study Guide
Guide cover image

Preface to Lyrical Ballads

William Wordsworth

Study Guide
Guide cover image

She Dwelt Among The Untrodden Ways

William Wordsworth

Study Guide
Guide cover image

She Was a Phantom of Delight

William Wordsworth

Plot Summary
Guide cover placeholder

The Prelude

William Wordsworth, Jonathan Wordsworth, M.H. Abrams, Stephen Gill

Study Guide
Guide cover image

The Solitary Reaper

William Wordsworth

Study Guide
Guide cover image

The World's Best Poetry, Volume 5 (Part 1): Nature

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Mary Mapes Dodge, George Darley, William Motherwell, George Eliot, John Milton, Clement Scott, George Arnold, Robert Browning, James Thomson, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., William Ernest Henley, Denis Florence MacCarthy, William Cullen Bryant, John Sterling, John Clare, Izaak Walton, Matthew Arnold, James Whitcomb Riley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Edward Jenner, William Gilmore Simms, Charles G.D. Roberts, Henry Timrod, William Cox Bennett, Bliss Carman, Archibald Lampman, George MacDonald, William Shakespeare, Matthias Claudius, Alexander Hume, James Beattie, Thomas Gray, Craig Franklin, John Cunningham, Norman Rowland Gale, James Gates Percival, Joel Benton, Thomas Heywood, Richard Hovey, Anna Boynton Averill, Charles Sangster, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Dora Hill Read Goodale, Joanna Baillie, Thomas Nashe, Henry Wotton, Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, John Howard Bryant, John G.C. Brainard, Thomas Campbell, Eduard Mörike, Algernon Charles Swinburne, William Morris, David Gray, William Cowper, W.B. Yeats, William Prescott Foster, Richard Henry Dana Jr., Thomas Carew, William Howitt, John B. Tabb, Jones Very, Henry Fielding, Barry Cornwall, Samuel Daniel, John Keats, Homer, George Francis Savage-Armstrong, John Leyden, Tomas Peter, Thomas Hood, Philip Pendleton Cooke, Richard Watson Gilder, Ethelwyn Wetherald, William Wordsworth, Euripides, Joseph Blanco White, Edmund Clarence Stedman, G.W. Pettee, Robert Tannahill, Ebenezer Jones, John Chalkhill, Abraham Cowley, Paul Hamilton Hayne, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, James Russell Lowell, Andrew Marvell, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Lisle Bowles, Leanne Yau, Charles Harpur, Sonia, Edith M. Thomas, Charles Kingsley, Lord Byron, Ebenezer Elliott, Benjamin Franklin Taylor, Richard Henry Horne, Jason in Panama, Walter Scott, Hartley Coleridge, Duncan Campbell Scott, Alfred Tennyson, John Davies, Aristophanes, Charles G. Eastman, Elizabeth Roberts MacDonald, William Browne, Robert Burns, Samuel Rogers, Ludwig H.C. Hölty, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Celia Laighton Thaxter

Study Guide
Guide cover image

To the Skylark

William Wordsworth

Plot Summary
Guide cover placeholder

We are Seven

William Wordsworth