斯蒂芬·吉爾，牛津大學榮休教授，林肯學院特聘院士，長期擔任華茲華斯基金會董事。他編輯的《威廉·華茲華斯索爾茲伯裏平原詩歌》（1975）開啓瞭康奈爾權威版華茲華斯詩歌叢書；此後兩度編輯牛津版華茲華斯詩文選。代錶作有《華茲華斯與維多利亞人》（1998），《華茲華斯的重遊》（2012）。第一版《威廉·華茲華斯傳》（1989）享有盛譽，為紀念詩人二百五十周年華誕，特此增訂再版。

Based on intimate knowledge of the poet's manuscripts, on a fresh look at contemporary records, and on a study of the mass of material that has appeared since the last serious biography, a quarter-century ago, this new account of Wordsworth focuses on what was most important to him - his life as a writer. The common notion is that the older Wordsworth betrayed his youthful, radical self to become a prosy Tory bore. By contrast, this intelligent and authoritative biography demonstrates that once the poet had returned to the Lake District, determined to live dedicated to poetry at whatever cost, his life took on a unity and purpose it had previously lacked. His politics certainly changed, and his poetic power waned, but from 1799 almost until his death in 1850, Wordsworth single-mindedly shaped his own life in submission to an imaginative possession whose importance he never doubted. It was, in its way, a heroic life. Wordsworth suffered numbing blows from the death of friends and family, including three of his own children. Critics reviled his poetry for over twenty years, and he never made enough money by his pen to live on - unlike his dear friend Scott. Yet his dedication to his art did not waver. In middle age he knew that contemporaries valued him as a moral sage; in old age he suffered the embarrassment of being a cultural icon. The lucid narrative that Stephen Gill draws out is the story of that hard-won triumph: its purpose is to bring readers back freshly to poetry that is full of human understanding and experience, and a tested, sober faith in 'Man's unconquerable mind'.