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Guide to the Lakes
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Relation to Wordsworth's life and thought
File:Dove Cottage (8061959522).jpg|thumb|Dove Cottage, Wordsworth's home near Grasmere in the Lake DistrictLake DistrictWordsworth was born in the Lake District and spent much of his life living there. Wordsworth and his friends Robert Southey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge became known as Lake Poets not only because they lived in this area but also because its landscapes and people inspired their work.By 1810, Wordsworth was living at Allan Bank near Grasmere with his sister and collaborator Dorothy Wordsworth, his sister-in-law, his wife, and their four small children. A fifth child was born to them in 1810. Several commentators have suggested that Wordsworth agreed to write text for a new book of engravings because he needed money,BOOK, The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic Period, WW Norton, Stillinger, Jack, Tintern Abbey, Tourism, and Romantic Landscape, 2005,weblink But a decade later, in financial straits, Wordsworth wrote the first version of a guidebook addressed to these same "moping Son[s] of Idleness" (as he calls them in the next line of The Brothers), now dignified as "Persons of taste, and feeling for Landscape.", 0-393-92720-2, a suggestion supported by Wordsworth's scathing description of the engravings in an 1810 letter to Lady Beaumont:BOOK, Wordsworth's 'Guide to the Lakes' with a new preface by Stephen Gill, Frances Lincoln, Wordsworth, William, Ernest de Sélincourt, Ernest de Sélincourt, William Wordsworth, 1926, 2004, Yet a description of from the pen of Wordsworth of the country that none has ever known as he knew it is a rare possession, whilst it supplies a suggestive commentary to much of his greatest and most characteristic work., ixâxxiv, 9780711223653, "The drawings, or etchings, or whatever they may be called are ... intolerable. You will receive from them that sort of disgust which I do from bad poetry ... They will please many who in all the arts are most taken by what is worthless."Publishing history
The beauty of the Lake District was already well known in 1810, the year Wordsworth's Guide to the Lakes was first published, as an anonymous introduction to a book of engravings of the Lake District by the Reverend Joseph Wilkinson.NEWS, Simon Akam, Wordsworth's Lake District, 200 years on,weblink There are modern editions in print, but they're of the expanded fifth edition of 1835. I needed the original 1810 text, written as an anonymous introduction to a volume of Lakeland engravings by a provincial cleric, the Rev. Joseph Wilkinson., Washington Post, 6 June 2010Organization
Directions and information for the tourist
Wordsworth begins this section as follows: In preparing this Manual, it was the Author's principal wish to furnish a Guide or Companion for the Minds of Persons of taste, and feeling for Landscape, who might be inclined to explore the District of the Lakes with that degree of attention to which its beauty may fairly lay claim. For the more sure attainment, however, of this primary object, he will begin by undertaking the humble and tedious task of supplying the Tourist with directions how to approach the several scenes in their best, or most convenient, order.Wordsworth's emphasis on the word "Minds" reflects "his constant interest in subject-object interactions," evident throughout the book and in his poetry in general.{{clarify|date=November 2020}}Description of the scenery of the Lakes
What the Norton Anthology calls Wordsworth's "Lake District chauvinism" is evident in his comparisons of its lakes and mountains to those of Scotland, Wales, and Switzerland. He finds much to praise even in the region's climate, which is marked by changeability, with frequent clouds, rain, or even gales:Such clouds, cleaving to their stations, or lifting up suddenly their glittering heads from behind rocky barriers, or hurrying out of sight with speed of the sharpest edge, will often tempt an inhabitant to congratulate himself on belonging to a country of mists and clouds and storms, and make him think of the blank sky of Egypt, and of the cerulean vacancy of Italy, as an unanimated and even a sad spectacle. (page 58)Miscellaneous observations
Wordsworth begins by discussing the relative advantages of different seasons for a visit to the Lakes.Next he embarks on a long comparison of Lake District scenery to the much-praised landscapes of Switzerland, although with this initial disclaimer (page 98):Nothing is more injurious to genuine feeling than the practice of hastily and ungraciously deprecating the face of one country by comparing it with that of another ... fastidiousness is a wretched travelling companion; and the best guide to which in matters of taste we can entrust ourselves, is a disposition to be pleased.Scawfell Pike
The description of an ascent of Scawfell Pike (now Scafell Pike) is copied from a letter written by Dorothy Wordsworth describing her visit to this mountain in 1818. William ambiguously credits this to a "letter to a friend". This same account was copied by Harriet Martineau (with attribution to William Wordsworth) in her widely used guide book of 1855, which was in its 4th edition by 1876 - thereby ensuring a wide circulation of this account for much of the 19th century.BOOK, A Complete Guide to the English Lakes, Martineau, Harriet,weblink nd, Windermere, John Garnett, Archive.org, reviewed in the Westmorland Gazette, Saturday 8 July 1871, pg 3, column 1Excursions
Here Wordsworth describes several itineraries a traveller might choose leading to some of the Lake District's finest views. He includes in this section a long passage transcribed nearly intact from the 1805 journal of his sister Dorothy Wordsworth about a trip they took from their home in Grasmere to Ullswater (see Sélincourt footnote pp 181 â 182).Ode ("The pass of Kirkstone")
Throughout this Guide, Wordsworth includes poems (by himself and by others) expanding on topics being discussed in prose. This section of the guidebook is an ode in rhyming verse by Wordsworth evoking the hard ascent and joyful descent of Kirkstone Pass, a high mountain pass between Ambleside and Patterdale.Itinerary
This section of the book contains mileages measured between various Lake District destinations. According to the fifth edition text (page 123), "The Publishers, with the permission of the Author, have added the following Itinerary of the Lakes for the Benefit of the Tourist." Hence the last part of the Guide that was written by Wordsworth was his ode concerning the pass of Kirkstone.Reception
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