Following her trip to Scotland in 1803, Dorothy Wordsworth—English author, poet, diarist, and sister to William Wordsworth—stayed near Jedburgh Abbey in accommodations provided her by the Scottish poet and novelist Walter Scott. In her diary, she noted the following:
In Passages from the Life of Charles Knight—the abridged, American version of Knight’s three-volume autobiography, Passages of a Working Life during Half a Century: with a Prelude of Early Reminisces—Knight describes his “awakening feeling for the preservation of our historical monuments,” intending to fire a similar appreciation in working clas
The constellation of ten images in Charles Knight’s volume on British history creates a rich set of perspectives on the historic site of Pevensey Castle. The picturesque aesthetic, first advocated by the Rev. William Gilpin, was often applied to medieval ruins.
Commenting on Romantic ruin painting, Louis Hawes states that medieval ruins were popular subjects for topographical artists and watercolorists. Indeed, the portfolios of Samuel Prout and Samuel and Nathaniel Buck—trained topographers of the Romantic era—all include medieval ruins.
The architectural patrimony of the Middle Ages received greater attention in the Romantic era because of three major factors. The first was the boom of domestic tourism beginning in the 1790s as a result of political tension on the Continent.
