Selections from Letters
Related to the Guide to the Lakes
This appendix assembles illustrative passages from letters directly related to the
composition, reception, and revision of Wordsworth’s Guide to the Lakes. The selections appear chronologically and are grouped into five key phases in the
Guide’s history: 1807–1811 (its origination and initial publication in Wilkinson’s Select Views); 1820 (its first appearance under Wordsworth’s name in The River Duddon); 1821–1834 (the text’s evolution into an independent guidebook in the third and fourth editions);
1835–1841 (Wordsworth’s final revisions and the reception of the fifth edition); and 1842–1850 (its reissue in Hudson’s Complete Guide and absorption by the early-Victorian travel book industry).
These excerpts derive from a number of sources, including original letters held at
various repositories. Unless otherwise indicated in the footnotes, reliable and complete
transcriptions of those letters by the Wordsworths may be found in The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, 2nd ed., 8 vols. Oxford UP, 1967–93. Throughout our selections, we regularize punctuation,
expand abbreviations, and offer slight emendations for the sake of clarity.
1807–1811: The Origins and First Edition of the Guide
1. Dorothy Wordsworth (DW) to Jane Marshall, 18 October 1807
is already musing on certain subjects that will become important in his topographical
essays, including his proscriptions on the planting of larch trees.
My Brother has made great use of Mr. Marshall’s
(1)
property in the Guide (p. xvi in 1835 edition, para. 20 in our text).
observations on planting, with which he has been greatly pleased, as they coincide
with his own previous ideas of what should be. He recommends to every body to plant larches on their high rocky grounds—and oak, ash, etc. etc. on their richer and low grounds.
2. William Wordsworth (WW) to the Reverend J. Pering, 2 October 1808
the summer of 1808 and enjoyed meeting William and Dorothy Wordsworth. Hoping to enhance
his travel journal, he later requested a written description of the local mountains
from the poet. In this friendly reply, Wordsworth offered several reasons for respectfully
declining the request. A copy of Wordsworth’s letter survives in Pering’s manuscript
notebook.
I am pleased to find that this beautiful country has made such an impression upon
you as to induce you to record your feelings: but what shall I say to your request
that I should communicate to you some description of the same objects?—Alas! you have
but a faint notion how disagreeable writing, of all Sorts, is to me, except from the
impulse of the moment.
I must be my own Task master or I can do nothing at all. Last autumn I made a little
Tour, with my wife, and she was very anxious that I should preserve the memory of
it by a written account. I tried to comply with her entreaty, but an insuperable dullness
came over me, and I could make no progress.
This simple and true statement I am sure you will deem a sufficient apology for not
venturing upon a theme so boundless as this sublime and beautiful region.
Besides, you can easily conceive that objects may be too familiar to a Man, to leave
him the power of describing them. This is the case with me in regard to these Lakes
and mountains, which are my native Country, and among which I have passed the greatest
part of my life: and really I should be utterly at a loss were I about to set myself
to a formal delineation of them, or of any part of them, where to begin, and where
to end.
3. Joseph Wilkinson to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, early June 1809
where Coleridge was residing with the Wordsworths. Presumably overwhelmed with his
new periodical, The Friend, Coleridge had apparently suggested Wordsworth as a potential collaborator for Wilkinson.
This letter includes Wilkinson’s response to Wordsworth’s concerns over Select Views competing with a similar series by the poet’s artist friend William Green of Ambleside
(1725–1811, DNB). On its dating, see note 26 in the introduction to this edition.
I am just returned from Town, where I have been making arrangements for my publication,
and as I have seen some of Mr. Green’s numbers I will be obliged to you if you will
tell our friend Wordsworth—that no two works, descriptive of the same country can
be more different, or less likely to interfere with each other, than his and mine.
But I shall write to Mr. Wordsworth in a few days more fully upon the subject when
I hope either Mr. W.—or yourself, or both, will afford me the assistance I shall explain,
to enable me to make my work more perfect and acceptable to the public than it otherwise
would be.
4. DW to Catherine Clarkson, 18 November 1809
from 1796 to 1806, during which time they became intimates of the Wordsworths, but
now they had moved back to the south of England. Dorothy here praises William’s introduction
to Select Views and reports that he is considering publishing his own guidebook apart from Wilkinson,
predicting that a guidebook will prove more lucrative than her brother’s poetry. The
letter reveals various details about the textual history of Select Views, including that Sara Hutchinson sometimes acted as scribe for the project and that
Wordsworth was awaiting proofs of Wilkinson’s prints before setting out on the “descriptions”
part of his assignment.
Sara has been kept almost constantly busy in transcribing: for William, and for ‘The
Friend’; therefore she has desired me to write to you. For William she has been transcribing
the introduction to a collection of prints to be published by Mr. Wilkinson of Thetford
(of which I believe you know the history as your husband’s name is down among those
of the subscribers). I hope you will be interested with William’s part of the work
(he has only finished the general introduction, being unable to do the rest till he
has seen the prints). It is the only regular and I may say scientific account of the present and past state and appearance of the country that has yet
appeared. I think, if he were to write a Guide to the Lakes and prefix this preface,
it would sell better, and bring him more money than any of his higher labours. He
has some thoughts of doing this; but do not mention it, as Mr. W[ilkinson]’s work
should have its fair run. He mentioned to Mr. Wilkinson his scheme, to which I should
think that Mr. W. will have no objection; as the Guide will, by calling Mr. W.’s publication
to mind, after its first run, perhaps help to keep up the sale.
5. WW to Joseph Wilkinson, ca. late May or June 1810
hand at the top of a sheet transcribed by Sara Hutchinson, illuminates the collaborative
process of Select Views, showing all parties scrambling to keep up with the serial publication schedule.
The second, a postscript, implies that Wilkinson’s art had impressed at least some
in the extended Wordsworth family. Wordsworth’s notes have been conjecturally dated
March 1810 by earlier editors, but our research suggests he wrote them later (see
note 46 in our Introduction).
My dear Sir, Herewith is matter for two more numbers; I shall send for two additional
ones in a couple of days.—You will probably judge best to [print?] matter for two
numbers with each month as [you] have only six months before you, and your numbers
are 12.
My B[rother] Dr. Wordsworth
(2)
chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth.
seeing by chance a specimen of your work put down his name then as a Subscriber, being
so much pleased with it. Pray let a copy of as good impressions as you can command
be sent for him to the Palace at Lambeth[.]
6. WW to Lady Beaumont, 10 May 1810
It begins with his estimate of the best features of his introduction and an explanation
of his rhetorical aims before moving on to dismiss Wilkinson’s artwork. Sir George
(1753–1827, DNB) and Lady Margaret Beaumont were important patrons of the arts, and Sir George was
an amateur landscape painter himself.
I am very happy that you have read the Introduction with so much pleasure, and must
thank you for your kindness in telling me of it. I thought the part about the Cottages
well-done; and also liked a sentence where I transport the Reader to the top of one
of the Mountains, or rather to the Cloud chosen for his station, and give a sketch
of the impressions which the Country might be supposed to make on a feeling mind,
contemplating its appearance before it was inhabited. But what I wished to accomplish
was to give a model of the manner in which topographical descriptions ought to be
executed, in order to their being either useful or intelligible, by evolving truly
and distinctly one appearance from another. In this I think I have not wholly failed.
The drawings, or Etchings, or whatever they may be called, are, I know[?], such as
to you and Sir George must be intolerable. You will receive from them that sort of
disgust which I do from bad Poetry, a disgust which can never be felt in its full
strength, but by those who are practised in an art, as well as Amateurs of it. I took
Sir George’s subscription as a kindness done to myself; and Wilkinson though not superabundant
in good sense told me that he saw it in that light. I do however sincerely hope that
the Author and his Wife (who certainly, notwithstanding her faults and foibles, is
no ordinary Woman) may be spared any mortification from hearing them condemned severely
by acknowledged judges. They will please many who in all the arts are most taken with
what is most worthless. I do not mean that there is not in simple unadulterated minds
a sense of the beautiful and sublime in art; but into the hands of few such do prints
or picture fall.
7. WW to Mary Wordsworth, 22 July 1810
to Coleorton Hall, the Beaumonts’ rural retreat in Leicestershire, he complains of
his eye trouble and fatigue with Select Views and notes the assistance Dorothy is rendering in fulfilling his commitments to Wilkinson.
I have read nothing at all since I came here, nor had any inclination to read; but
I am somewhat grieved that my eye has benefited so little by this long holiday. D[orothy]
has been so good as to abridge the sheets I wrote for Wilkinson[.] [F]or my own part
I have no longer any interest in the thing; so he must make what he can of them; as
I can not do the thing in my own way I shall merely task myself with getting through
it with the least trouble.
8. DW to Catherine Clarkson, 12 November 1810
in completing the Select Views letterpress, the last installment of which was due to ship in roughly two weeks.
I wrote so far last night after W[illiam] and M[ary] were gone to bed; for in the
evening Wm. Employed me to compose a description or two for the finishing of his work
for Wilkinson. It is a most irksome task to him, not being permitted to follow his
own course, and I daresay you will find this latter part very flat.
1820: The River Duddon Collection
9. WW to Longman and Co., 11 April 1820
“Topographical Description,”
the heavily revised version of his Select Views letterpress that would first appear under Wordsworth’s name as an appendix to this
1820 collection. Also preparing for the July 1820 release of a new four-volume edition
of his collected poems, Wordsworth shows his usual concern with the physical format
and aesthetics of his books.
Will you please to transmit the following additional corrections and Errata to the
Printer without delay. My Brother, and Sister (who is now in London)
(3)
She was staying with their brother Christopher at Lambeth.
will speak to you about reprinting my miscellaneous poems. I had agreed with them
that they should be printed in 3 vol. the same size as the last Edition—but I prefer
a smaller size in 4 vols. and likewise a Paper more of a cream colour than has recently
been used. Shew my Sister a copy of Southey’s Madoc, one of those pages contains as
many lines, without being crowded, as my two volumes, which are so much larger size.
Announce in the Ad: the Topographical description of the lakes.
10. WW to Lord Lonsdale, 28 or 29 April 1820
of Lonsdale (1757–1844, DNB), Wordsworth seizes the occasion to mention his new River Duddon collection and, more particularly, the
“Topographical Description.”
Your Lordship perhaps has already received a Publication of mine. The account of the
Rev[erend] Robert Walker, in the Notes to the 1st Poem, will I think interest you;
as probably will some parts of the Description of the Lake Country at the end of the
vol.
11. Sara Hutchinson to John Monkhouse, 15 October 1820
(4)
was regarded by Southey as “by far the most faithful delineator of the scenery of
the Lakes” (The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, ed. Charles Cuthbert Southey,
vol. 5, Longman, 1850, 52). For his part, Wordsworth wrote three sonnets in 1818 “Suggested
by Mr. W. Westall’s Views of the Caves, Etc., In Yorkshire.” For Sara Hutchinson’s
full letter, see The Letters of Sara Hutchinson, 1800–1835, ed. Kathleen Coburn, U
of Toronto P, 1954, 212–14.
published a set of aquatint Views of the Lake and of the Vale of Keswick, for which Robert Southey wrote the introduction. In this letter to her cousin, Wordsworth’s
sister-in-law Sara Hutchinson compares Westall’s admirable landscapes with Joseph
Wilkinson’s from Select Views. She also compares Southey’s and Wordsworth’s introductions to these respective series.
This letter likely captures a general consensus view in the Wordsworth household about
the relative values of Wilkinson’s art and Wordsworth’s prose.
I hope you will not be disappointed in the 2 Nos now sent. . . . Westall tells me that the former has gained him great credit amon[g]
the Artists for its execution—and I could not have believed tha[t] an Engraving could have given the quiet and
solemn feeling inspired by such a scene as the latter. The extra 18d upon the 3rd is occasioned by the Letter press. W[estall] would scarcely let me pay it, although
he said it really cost him as much, ie. the paper & printing, for Southey furnished
the matter gratis—Don’t expect from this that it is anything but a mere description—or
rather information for it is all about Becks & the waters—intended only to be useful—& not like Wm’s Preface to Wilkinson’s the
only part of the Publication worth any thing.
1821–1834: The Third and Fourth Editions
12. WW to Richard Sharp, 16 April 1822
the body of this letter expresses hope that Sharp’s travels abroad have not “driven
the North out of [his] estimation,” Wordsworth’s postscript preemptively asks for
his correspondent’s reactions to the forthcoming third edition of the Guide, its first appearance as a stand-alone book.
I have in the press a little book on the Lakes, containing some illustrative remarks
on Swiss scenery. If I have fallen into any errors, I know no one better able to correct
them than yourself, and should the book (which I must mention is chiefly a republication) meet your eye, pray point out to me the mistakes. The part relating to
Switzerland is new.
13. DW to Henry Crabb Robinson, 21 December 1822
to prepare the 1823 Guide for press. Though the 1823 is usually called the fourth edition (following its own
title page), Dorothy refers to it as the second, presumably because the 1822 version
was the first to be published separately. Note that Dorothy speaks of “our” job preparing
this new edition of the Guide. She had contributed to the project at each stage of its evolution, and this new
edition would include (without acknowledging her authorship) a second travel account
from one of her notebooks.
My Brother’s mind, since our summer company left us has been so much taken up with
anxiety that till within the last 3 weeks he has done nothing. Our first job was to
prepare, with additions—a second Edition of his little Book on the Lakes. He is now
giving his mind to Poetry again, but I do not think he will ever, in his life-time—publish any more poems—for they hang on hand—never selling—the Sketches and the Memorials
(5)
1820, both published earlier in the year.
have not, I daresay half sold[.]
14. WW to Longman and Co., 25 November 1828
of the 1823 Guide. Several hundred copies of the 1,000-copy edition remained unsold in 1828.
The draft on account of the Book of the Lakes did not reach me till within a very
few days before I received your letter of enquiry—I, having left London previous to
your sending it to Bryanston St.
(6)
(1791–1851 OED), a poet who later married Wordsworth’s daughter Dora. Quillinan is
the “friend” mentioned at the end of this sentence.
—where it had lain during the long absence of my friend. The bill is now afloat, and
will no doubt soon find its way to you.
I was suprized to hear from a Gentleman yesterday, by letter, that he had sent to
P.N. Row
for a copy of the Companion to the Lakes but was told it could not be had.—I presume it being asked for by that title has been
the cause of the disappointment—not that the book is out of Print? Pray send a copy
with the author’s respects to G. Huntly Gordon Esq[ui]re[,] Cannon Row Chambers, Cannon
Row.
15. WW to George Huntly Gordon, 15 December 1828
of his better-known statements about the work: “it could not have been written without
long experience.”
In the Book of the Lakes, which I have not at hand—is a passage rather too vaguely
expressed where I content myself with saying—that after a certain point of elevation—the
effect of the Mountains depends much more upon their form than their absolute Height—This
point which ought to have been defined, is the one to which fleecy clouds (not thin
and watery vapours) are accustomed to descend.—I am glad you are so much interested
with this little tract—it could not have been written without long experience.
1835–1841: The 1835 Guide
16. WW to John Hudson and Cornelius Nicholson, 7 May 1835
Hudson and Nicholson. He feels confident a locally produced and sold fifth edition
will turn a respectable profit.
My Book upon the Lakes is out of Print, and it has struck me that an arrangement might
be made with you for its being printed and published at Kendal; and I should like
to know, if you approve of the proposal, upon what terms you would undertake it, so
as that the joint interests of Author and Publisher might be fairly and best promoted.—I
am persuaded that this little Book would have a considerable sale, if any Publisher
Resident in the Country would undertake to circulate it through the Lake district,
and in the leading Towns of the North. Of course an arrangement would be expedient
so that the Book might be had at Messrs. Longmans and Moxon my Publishers in London,
and any other Bookseller.
Let me have your answer as soon as you can, as I wish to go to press instantly in
order to secure the advantage of the sale of the approaching season.—
If either of you Gentlemen should be coming this way I should be glad to settle the
terms etc. by conversation.
17. WW to Edward Moxon, 2 August 1835
new publisher.
I have been reprinting and republishing at Kendal my little Book on the lakes with
some additions. I took the liberty of adding your name to Longmans on the Title page;
the Publishers, on their part, added their own London publisher, Whit[t]aker. —I hope
some Copies have been forwarded to you, as I requested they might.
18. WW to Hudson and Nicholson, 11 August 1835
for sale in the metropolis.
I am surprized to find by a letter from Longmans this morn[in]g that they have not
rec[eive]d a Supply of the book of the Lakes—Pray, if you have not already done so
lose no time in forwarding a parcel to that house, and also to Mr. Moxon and—
19. WW to Simpkin Marshall and Co., 24 September 1835 [?]
over the Guide’s distribution, this letter responds to a complaint from a London bookseller about
the new edition’s pricing.
In answer to your Letter received some time ago, I have to say, that I have never
had any thing to do with the Sale of my books—Some time since Messrs. Longman informed
me that my Book on the Lakes was out of Print, and for the sake of interesting a local
Publisher in it, I put the work into his hands, leaving to him to fix the Price, without
being in the least aware of the probability of any person being injured in any way
by the change, or that any inconvenience could arize out of it to any one; and I cannot
see what I can do in the case—
Sorry for your disappointment, which seems inevitable, in cases of this kind.
20. WW to Edward Moxon, 25 September 1835
not expect his firm to actively market the 1835 Guide.
Don’t give yourself the least trouble about pushing my Lake Book—it is a mere trifle,
and I had your name put into the title page solely out of regard to you.
21. WW to Henry Reed, 14 September 1840
Pennsylvania, was Wordsworth’s American editor. In this letter, the poet expresses
pleasure in finding that Reed has appreciated the intertwined nature of his poetry
and prose. Reed had written to Wordsworth in January 1839, thanking him for a copy
of the 1835 Guide and offering what would become a typical North American response: “It may not be uninteresting
to you to learn that a volume so purely local in its nature should afford so much
value to a distant reader as I have drawn from it. I have found it a guide to the
mind in kindred scenes and that it cultivates a taste for landscape which finds its
indulgence in the worthy admiration of regions that are accessible to us.”
(8)
with His American Editor: 1836–1850, ed. Leslie Nathan Broughton, Cornell UP, 1933,
15–18.
I am much pleased by what you say in your letter of the 18th of May last, upon the
tract of the Convention of Cintra,
(9)
Concerning it, Reed wrote (in the May letter mentioned by the poet), “I was not less
surprised than delighted in finding so much more of permanent and universal interest
than I had any reason to look for in a work professedly of an occasional character.
I cannot better convey the impression it has made on my mind than by saying that I
cherish it with the same feeling as the poems, and therefore is it that I am anxious
to see them conjoined. No reader, who duly appreciates the latter, can fail to perceive
that th…
and I think myself with some interest upon its being reprinted hereafter, along with
my other writings. . . . It was I repeat gratifying to me that you should have spoken
of that work as you do, and particularly that you should have considered it in relation
to my Poems, somewhat in the same manner you had done in respect to my little Book
upon the Lakes.
22. WW to Thomas Powell, 19 August 1841
Powell to send prints of an engraved portrait of Wordsworth to Kendal for sale alongside
the Guide.
(10)
DNB), an admirer of Wordsworth’s for whom, on the strength of recommendations from
Thomas Powell and Leigh Hunt, he agreed to sit.
At Kendal the Booksellers I employ, who publish my little Vol: upon the Lakes, are
named Hudson and Nicholson. They are responsible people, and perhaps a few Copies
might be disposed of there by them.
1842–1850: “Hudson’s Guide” and the Victorian Wordsworth
23. Adam Sedgwick to WW, 26 March 1842
letter now resides at the Wordsworth Trust (WLMS A/Sedgwick, Adam /1).
I have heard, from Kendal, that a new Edition of your beautiful little work on the
Lake Country was in the press; & I have been asked to contribute a short essay, on the muscular integuments, ribs and bones of your mountains. . . .[I]f you
now claim my promise, and do not fear to forfeit [your?] inspiration, by seeming to
league yourself with one on whom the nine sisters have never so much as smiled, I
will send a short essay to your printer.
24. WW to Adam Sedgwick, ca. late March or early April 1842
what will become three short essays on the Lake District for Hudson’s Guide.
The poet describes his own oversight of the project, emphasizing that while he has
given editorial rights to Hudson, he remains committed to its still serving, as he
asserted in opening his 1835 edition, as “a Guide or Companion for the Minds of Persons of taste.”
You have much obliged me by the promptitude with which you have met the request made
through an Acquaintance or Friend of my Publishers; and I should be very happy to
be the Medium of conveying to the public your view of the Geology of this interesting
District, however concisely given. First, however, I must tell you exactly how the
matter stands between me and the Publishers. The last edition of my little work being
nearly out I undertook about a twelvemonth since to furnish some new Matter in the
way of a more minute Guide for the Body of the Tourist, as I found that the Guide Books which attended mainly to this were
preferred much, by the generality of Tourists, to mine, which, though in fact containing
as much of this sort of matter as could be of any real use, appeared to be wanting
in this respect. The employment to which I had by a sort of promise committed myself
I found upon further consideration to be very troublesome and infra dig.:
and as I was still desirous that my Book should be circulated, not for any pecuniary
emolument, for that was quite trifling, but for the principles of Taste which it recommended,
I turned all that I had written over to Mr. Hudson the Publisher, stipulating only
that all that related to mind, should in my book be printed entire and separated from other matter, and so it now
stands. Every thing of mine will be reprinted, but the guide matter of mine will be interwoven with what Mr. Hudson has undertaken to write or compile,
the whole however before struck off to be submitted to my approbation. Mr. Gough of
Kendal,
(13)
publish Personal Reminiscences of the Habits of Animals (1872) and Observations on
the Heron and the Heronry at Dallam Tower, Westmorland (1880). His father, John Gough
(1757–1825, DNB), had lost his sight in childhood and served as Wordsworth’s model
for the blind philosopher in The Excursion.
a Son of the celebrated blind man of that place, will, Mr. Hudson expects, promote
the Botany, and if you would condescend to act upon your promise made to me long ago
under somewhat different circumstances, I think a Book would be produced answering
every purpose that could be desired.
25. WW to John Hudson, early April 1842
“Complete Guide”
and recommends rearranging its botany section to outdo A Concise Description of the English Lakes, a rival guidebook by fellow Lakelander Jonathan Otley, which had gone into a fifth edition in 1834.
I am sorry to say that your letter and proof arrived together with several other communications
and putting yours aside I entirely forgot it till this morning. I wrote to Prof. Sedgwick
in answer to a Letter from him, pressing him to prepare the essay as soon as he could;
which I have no doubt he will do.—Any thing I have to say, had better be reserved
for a brief advertisement. I am truly sorry to have disdained your proof as mentioned;
but will take care the like shall not occur in future. The introduction is well planned
and I wish you success in the [? Onerous] undertaking.
Mr. Hill my neighbor tells me that the Botany in Otley is not arranged scientifically.
Would Mr. Gough be so kind as to do it for us; pray ask him, joining my request with
your own. It would be a decided advantage to have this done.—
26. WW to Adam Sedgwick, 11 May 1842 [?]
appeal. He also explains a passage from his 1815 poem The Excursion that might, to Sedgwick’s eyes, seem dismissive of geology.
(14)
in which the speaker says of “rock hounds,”Nor is that Fellow-wanderer, so deem ILess
to be envied, (you may trace him oft By scars which his activity has leftBeside our
road and pathways, though, thank Heaven!This covert nook reports not of his hand)5He
who with pocket-hammer smites the edgeOf luckless rock or prominent stone, disguisedIn
weather-stains or crusted o’er by NatureWith her first growths, detaching by the strokea
chip or splinter—to resolve his doubts;10And, with that steady answer satisfied,…
I snatch a moment from the hurry of this place to thank you for the first of the Series
of Letters on the Geology of the Lake district which you have done me the honor of
addressing to me. I received it yesterday from Mr. Danby,
(15)
approached Sedgwick though this mutual acquaintance.
liked it very much, and am impatient for the rest. It will give the Kendal lake Book
so decided a superiority over every other, that the Publishers have good reason to
rejoice. I am happy to think that my endeavours to illustrate the beautiful Region
may be thought not unworthy of accompanying your scientific researches. I address
this to you at random, but hope it will be forwarded should you be no longer at Cambridge.
You perhaps don’t remember that the Pocket Hammerers were complained of not by me
in my own person, but in the character of a splenetic Recluse; I will, however, frankly
own that to a certain extent I sympathized with my imaginary personage, but I am sure I need not define for you how far, but
no farther, I went along with him. Geology and Minerology are very different things.
