The “Topographical Description” included in Wordsworth’s River Duddon volume was the second published version of what became the Guide to the Lakes—the first edition to carry Wordsworth’s name. See introductory essay on the book’s
textual history.

A poem published in 1811 by Wordsworth’s boyhood friend. Like Wordsworth, Charles Farish went from Hawkshead School to Cambridge, where he eventually became a fellow of Queen’s College. Wordsworth refers to Farish as his “schoolfellow and friend” in “Guilt and Sorrow; or Incidents upon Salisbury Plain.”

Lt. Col. William Mudge (1762–1820) was among the first great surveyors of the region.
His findings, including his extensive observations from Black Combe, were published
in 1811 in An Account of the Trigonometrical Survey, Carried on by Order of the Master-General
of His Majesty’s Ordnance. Wordsworth’s fascination with Mudge’s surveys is evident in two sonnets of 1811,
“Written with a Slate Pencil on a Stone, on the Side of the Mountain of Black Comb”
and “View from the Top of Black Comb.”

Lines 327-48 from Book II of Wordsworth’s The Excursion (1814).