Guide · Bespoke Lake District
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For about fifteen years, three of the finest poets in the English language were living within a few miles of each other in the Lake District, writing some of the greatest poetry in the language, arguing about what poetry was for, and transforming the way educated people in the English-speaking world thought about landscape, nature and the self.
And then it all fell apart. The Wordsworth-Coleridge estrangement is one of the most painful stories in English literary history. This tour tells it in the landscape where it happened.
William Wordsworth (1770–1850) needs little introduction. He is the central figure — the poet whose Prelude and Lyrical Ballads (the latter co-written with Coleridge) established the terms of English Romantic poetry, and whose long residence in the Lake District (at Dove Cottage from 1799, at Allan Bank from 1808, at Rydal Mount from 1813 until his death) gave him continuous access to the landscape he required.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) came to the Lake District in 1800, renting Greta Hall in Keswick where he lived until 1803. His three years in the Lakes produced some of his finest work — Dejection: An Ode (1802) and the notebooks of this period are among the most significant documents of Romantic thought. Coleridge was already struggling with opium addiction and deteriorating health; the Lakes years are the last sustained period of productive work before his powers began to fail.
Robert Southey (1774–1843) moved to Greta Hall in Keswick in 1803 — partly to care for Coleridge's wife and children when Coleridge abandoned them — and lived there for the rest of his life. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1813, holding the position until his death. He is now the least well known of the three, though The Battle of Blenheim and the children's story of Goldilocks (in its original form as The Story of the Three Bears) are attributable to him.
The relationship between Wordsworth and Coleridge was one of the most productive literary friendships in the English language and one of the most complicated. They had met in 1795 and spent the winter of 1797–98 living as near-neighbours in Somerset, where they wrote Lyrical Ballads (1798) together — a volume that is usually taken as the starting point of English Romanticism.
Coleridge's move to Keswick in 1800 was motivated partly by the desire to continue the intellectual partnership with Wordsworth, who had settled at Dove Cottage in Grasmere. For two years this worked: the poets walked together frequently, shared their work and their ideas, and produced some of their best writing.
The deterioration of the relationship came from multiple directions simultaneously: Coleridge's addiction, his deepening unhappiness in his marriage, his obsessive (and unrequited) love for Sarah Hutchinson — Wordsworth's future sister-in-law — and what Coleridge experienced as an increasing sense that Wordsworth was taking from him intellectually without adequate acknowledgement. The formal estrangement came in 1810 and was never fully repaired.
Dove Cottage, Grasmere — Wordsworth's home from December 1799 to May 1808, when the growth of the family made the cottage too small. This is where the Prelude was written, where Dorothy's famous journals record the daily life of the household, and where Coleridge visited most frequently in the early years of the Lakes period.
Greta Hall, Keswick — now part of Keswick School and not open to the public, but visible from the road. The view from Greta Hall across Derwentwater to the fells is the view that both Coleridge and Southey wrote about.
Allan Bank, Grasmere — the large house above Grasmere village where Wordsworth and his family lived from 1808 to 1811. Now a National Trust property, unusually relaxed in its visitor arrangements — open informally, with furniture kept minimal to allow guests to experience the space.
Rydal Mount — Wordsworth's final home, where he lived from 1813 until his death in 1850. The garden is largely as he designed it; the house contains original furniture.
A Lake Poets bespoke tour takes in the key sites associated with each of the three poets, with the expert storyteller drawing the threads together: the intellectual partnership, the political context (all three began as radical sympathisers with the French Revolution and moved towards conservatism as they aged), the personal relationships, and the specific ways in which the Lake District landscape appears in and shapes the poetry.
For guests with existing knowledge of the poetry, the day can be structured as a detailed literary discussion in the landscape. For guests less familiar with the texts, the expert storyteller provides the context that makes each location meaningful.
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More bespoke tour themes:
William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey, all within a few miles of each other for about fifteen years.
At Greta Hall in Keswick, from 1800 to 1803.
No — their relationship famously deteriorated, in what's considered one of the most painful estrangements in English literary history.