The Lake Poets were a group of English

poets A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writt ...

who all lived in the

Lake District The Lake District, also known as the Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region in North West England. A popular holiday destination, it is famous for its lakes, forests, and mountains (or '' fells''), and its associations with William Wordswor ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

, United Kingdom, in the first half of the nineteenth century. As a group, they followed no single "school" of thought or literary practice then known. They were named, only to be uniformly disparaged, by the ''

Edinburgh Review The ''Edinburgh Review'' is the title of four distinct intellectual and cultural magazines. The best known, longest-lasting, and most influential of the four was the third, which was published regularly from 1802 to 1929. ''Edinburgh Review'' ...

''. They are considered part of the Romantic Movement. The three main figures of what has become known as the Lakes School were

William Wordsworth William Wordsworth (7 April 177023 April 1850) was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication '' Lyrical Ballads'' (1798). Wordsworth's ' ...

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge (; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lak ...

, and

Robert Southey Robert Southey ( or ; 12 August 1774 – 21 March 1843) was an English poet of the Romantic school, and Poet Laureate from 1813 until his death. Like the other Lake Poets, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Southey began as a ra ...

. They were associated with several other poets and writers, including

Dorothy Wordsworth Dorothy Mae Ann Wordsworth (25 December 1771 – 25 January 1855) was an English author, poet, and diarist. She was the sister of the Romantic poet William Wordsworth, and the two were close all their adult lives. Dorothy Wordsworth had no a ...

Charles Lamb Charles Lamb (10 February 1775 – 27 December 1834) was an English essayist, poet, and antiquarian, best known for his '' Essays of Elia'' and for the children's book '' Tales from Shakespeare'', co-authored with his sister, Mary Lamb (1764� ...

Mary Lamb Mary Anne Lamb (3 December 1764 – 20 May 1847) was an English writer. She is best known for the collaboration with her brother Charles on the collection '' Tales from Shakespeare'' (1807). Mary suffered from mental illness, and in 1796, aged ...

, Charles Lloyd,

Hartley Coleridge Hartley Coleridge, possibly David Hartley Coleridge (19 September 1796 – 6 January 1849), was an English poet, biographer, essayist, and teacher. He was the eldest son of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. His sister Sara Coleridge was a poet a ...

, John Wilson, and

Thomas De Quincey Thomas Penson De Quincey (; 15 August 17858 December 1859) was an English writer, essayist, and literary critic, best known for his '' Confessions of an English Opium-Eater'' (1821). Many scholars suggest that in publishing this work De Quinc ...

Origins and accuracy of the name

The "Lake Poet School" (or '

Bards In Celtic cultures, a bard is a professional story teller, verse-maker, music composer, oral historian and genealogist, employed by a patron (such as a monarch or chieftain) to commemorate one or more of the patron's ancestors and to praise ...

of the Lake', or the 'Lake School') was initially a derogatory term ("the School of whining and hypochondriacal poets that haunt the Lakes", according to

Francis Jeffrey Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey (23 October 1773 – 26 January 1850) was a Scottish judge and literary critic. Life He was born at 7 Charles Street near Potterow in south Edinburgh, the son of George Jeffrey, a clerk in the Court of Session ...

as reported by Coleridge) that was also a misnomer, as it was neither particularly born out of the Lake District, nor was it a cohesive school of poetry. The principal members of the 'group' were

and

was an auxiliary member who was unpublished during her lifetime (her journals, letters, and poems were published posthumously), but she provided much of the inspiration for her brother William's work. There was a certain amount of additional

irony Irony (), in its broadest sense, is the juxtaposition of what on the surface appears to be the case and what is actually the case or to be expected; it is an important rhetorical device and literary technique. Irony can be categorized int ...

involved in the 'School's' perception by readers, who were inspired, upon reading the poetry, to visit the area, thus helping to destroy, in the mind of Wordsworth at least, the very thing that made the Lakes special (although he himself ended up writing one of the best guides to the region). In addition, many of the first and second generation practitioners of

Romantic poetry Romantic poetry is the poetry of the Romantic era, an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. It involved a reaction against prevailing Enlightenment ideas of the 18t ...

had a complex and not entirely easy relationship with the Lakes (apart from Wordsworth). "For the most part other Romantic poets either struggle with a Lake Poet identity or come to define themselves against what the Lakes seem to offer in poetic terms."

The Lake poets

For Wordsworth, who settled at

Dove Cottage Dove Cottage is a house on the edge of Grasmere in the Lake District of England. It is best known as the home of the poet William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy Wordsworth from December 1799 to May 1808, where they spent over eight years of ...

, Grasmere, with his sister Dorothy after some years of wandering, the Lakes became bound up with his identity as a poet. Born and brought up on the fringes of the Lake District (at

Cockermouth Cockermouth is a market town and civil parish in the Borough of Allerdale in Cumbria, England, so named because it is at the confluence of the River Cocker as it flows into the River Derwent. The mid-2010 census estimates state that Cocke ...

and Penrith), Wordsworth came back to the area in December 1799 and settled into a 'poetic retirement' within his 'native mountains.' Although Wordsworth did not 'discover' the Lake District, nor was he the one who popularised it the most, he "was destined to become one of the key attractions to the area, while his particular vision of his native landscape would have an enduring influence upon its future". Not just a 'nature poet', his poetry "is about the organic relationship between human beings and the natural world...'Thompson (2010), p. 87. After a brief flirtation with the

Picturesque Picturesque is an aesthetic ideal introduced into English cultural debate in 1782 by William Gilpin in ''Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, etc. Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the Summer of the Year ...

in his Cambridge years, he came to see this aesthetic view of nature as being only one of many (although it is arguable that he "was under the sway of Picturesque theory", he frequently transcended it). His 'vision' of nature was one that did not distort it in order to make art. Wordsworth's early radical political ideas led him to his second poetic innovation: the use of "plain language" and having for his subject the "common man" as represented by the Dales-folk (rather than "kings and queens, lords and ladies or gods and goddesses" as was the case up to then). His third innovation was to do with the inward-turning of his mind, producing a semi-autobiographical take on nature and imagination: his poem ''

The Prelude ''The Prelude or, Growth of a Poet's Mind; An Autobiographical Poem '' is an autobiographical poem in blank verse by the English poet William Wordsworth. Intended as the introduction to the more philosophical poem ''The Recluse,'' which Wordsw ...

'', he wrote to Dorothy, was "the poem on the growth of my own mind." Rydal Mount - geograph

Despite this reclusive side of his personality, Wordsworth was a strong believer in family and community, and he was much concerned with the effects on (especially poor) people's way of life of social change (for example, due to the

enclosure Enclosure or Inclosure is a term, used in English landownership, that refers to the appropriation of "waste" or " common land" enclosing it and by doing so depriving commoners of their rights of access and privilege. Agreements to enclose land ...

movement) that were taking place. He disliked change that flew in the face of Nature: the planting of regimented lines of Larches; the coming of the railways; new building that did not chime with the

vernacular A vernacular or vernacular language is in contrast with a "standard language". It refers to the language or dialect that is spoken by people that are inhabiting a particular country or region. The vernacular is typically the native language, n ...

; and the building of grand houses in the Lakes by the industrialists of Lancashire particularly upset him. In 1810 he published his ''

Guide to the Lakes ''Guide to the Lakes'', more fully ''A Guide through the District of the Lakes'', William Wordsworth's travellers' guidebook to England's Lake District, has been studied by scholars both for its relationship to his Romantic poetry and as an ea ...

'', tellingly subtitled "for the Use of Tourists and Residents", and with a Section Three entitled "Changes, and Rules of Taste for Preventing their Bad Effects." Nicholson argues that the ''Guide'' was the outcome of the loss of Wordsworth's poetic vision of nature and a turning outwards into hard facts in order to preserve his sanity after "years, perhaps, of disillusion, disappointment, of spiritual impotence..." Another aspect of it was the link to the ideas of

Uvedale Price Sir Uvedale Price, 1st Baronet (baptised 14 April 1747 – 14 September 1829), author of the ''Essay on the Picturesque, As Compared with the Sublime and The Beautiful'' (1794), was a Herefordshire landowner who was at the heart of the ' Picturesq ...

, whom Wordsworth knew and who proposed a "conservative, historicising and non-interventionist aesthetic".Victoria and Albert Museum (1984), p. 80. The ''Guide'' ran to five editions during Wordsworth's lifetime and proved to be very popular. Indeed, it has been said that "the architectural axioms of building and gardening in the Lake District for the next hundred years were established by the ''Guide''". For other writers, the region's pull was more uncertain.

Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge (; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake ...

followed Wordsworth to the Lakes and moved into

Greta Hall Greta Hall is a house in Keswick in the Lake District of England. It is best known as the home of the poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey. Overview The official address of Greta Hall is Main Street, Keswick, but it is located some ...

in 1800. Although identified by his contemporaries as a 'Lake Poet', Coleridge's response to the landscape was at variance with the vision of Wordsworth, leading Coleridge to identify the landscape's "Gothic elements"..."and in so doing seems to recognise a potential for psychological horror rather than solace." Wordsworth's rejection of the poem '' Christabel'', partly written at

, for the ''

Lyrical Ballads ''Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems'' is a collection of poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, first published in 1798 and generally considered to have marked the beginning of the English Romantic movement in literatu ...

'' collection, added to Coleridge's depression over his personal life, his doubts about being able to write as he would have wished and his ill-health which was made worse by the Cumbrian climate. This led him to resort to the Kendal Black Drop, making matters desperate. Coleridge moved out of the area in 1804. Greta Hall

, it has been argued, although becoming identified as the central 'Lake Poet' (he lived at Greta Hall from 1803 to 1843), was mostly a prose writer and did not particularly subscribe to the Wordsworthian vision of the Lakes. Southey, like Wordsworth, started out on the republican left, but, by the time the threat from Napoleon had dwindled, he had become the embodiment of a

Tory A Tory () is a person who holds a political philosophy known as Toryism, based on a British version of traditionalism and conservatism, which upholds the supremacy of social order as it has evolved in the English culture throughout history. The ...

extolling the virtues of nation and patriotism, and using the Lakes as a touchstone, and as "the symbol of the nation's covenant with God."

Letitia Elizabeth Landon Letitia Elizabeth Landon (14 August 1802 – 15 October 1838) was an English poet and novelist, better known by her initials L.E.L. The writings of Landon are transitional between Romanticism and the Victorian Age. Her first major breakthrough ...

's sketch, ''Grasmere Lake, A Sketch by a Cockney'', in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1834, is a spoof on the Lake Poets, whom she admired (especially Wordsworth) but regarded as outmoded. In her view the days of Romanticism were over. In ''John Paterson's Mare'',

James Hogg James Hogg (1770 – 21 November 1835) was a Scottish poet, novelist and essayist who wrote in both Scots and English. As a young man he worked as a shepherd and farmhand, and was largely self-educated through reading. He was a friend of many ...

's allegorical satire on the

Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian ...

publishing scene first published in the ''Newcastle Magazine'' in 1825, the Lake Poets feature as 'a whole covey of sandpipers or water larks'.

Associated writers

The second generation of Romantic poets were drawn to the area by the Romantic vision of seclusion and by the perceived republican views of the older poets, but found a different reality when they arrived. Shelley lived for three months in 1811 at Keswick, having been drawn to the Lakes by reading the early, "liberty and equality" Southey, only to find that Southey's views had changed and that the Lakes had been despoiled by "the manufacturers".

Keats John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets, with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of tuberculos ...

, in the summer of 1818, had a similar response to that of Shelley, finding his hero Wordsworth's house full of fashionable people and Wordsworth himself away canvassing for the local Tory candidate. Keats moved on to Scotland which provided him with the inspiration he sought (and where, in particular, he felt the influence of

Robert Burns Robert Burns (25 January 175921 July 1796), also known familiarly as Rabbie Burns, was a Scottish poet and lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and is celebrated worldwide. He is the best known of the poets who hav ...

Byron George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), known simply as Lord Byron, was an English romantic poet and peer. He was one of the leading figures of the Romantic movement, and has been regarded as among the ...

did not visit the Lakes, but he ridiculed the isolation and narrowness of mind of the older Lake Poets, as well as of their abandonment of radical politics. The hale and hearty John Wilson provided an alternative take on the role of Lake Poet. He lived near

Windermere Windermere (sometimes tautologically called Windermere Lake to distinguish it from the nearby town of Windermere) is the largest natural lake in England. More than 11 miles (18 km) in length, and almost 1 mile (1.5 km) at its wides ...

between 1808 and 1815 and knew the older Lake Poet trio well. His poetry (''Isle of Palms'') reveals a physical response to the Lakes scenery (he was an energetic walker and climber), and emphasises companionship and energy as against Wordsworthian quiet and solitude. Wilson knew both

Harriet Martineau Harriet Martineau (; 12 June 1802 – 27 June 1876) was an English social theorist often seen as the first female sociologist, focusing on race relations within much of her published material.Michael R. Hill (2002''Harriet Martineau: Theoretic ...

and

. Martineau settled in a house she had built near Ambleside in 1845. As befitted her

sociology Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation an ...

-based background, her views concentrated on the need for the Lakes to be connected more with the outside world (for example, she was in favour of improved sanitation and of the new railways being set up through the district, unlike her friend Wordsworth). Her guide to the Lakes (''Complete guide to the Lakes'', 1855) was a rather factual and clear-eyed description about what to find there and about the condition of the people. De Quincey moved into

in 1809 after having met his hero Wordsworth a couple of times before at

Allan Bank Allan Bank is a grade II listed two-storey villa standing on high ground slightly to the west of Grasmere village in the heart of the Lake District. It is best known for being from 1808 to 1811 the home of William Wordsworth, but it was also ...

, where the Wordsworths lived during 1808–1811, and then at

Rydal Mount Rydal Mount is a house in the small village of Rydal, near Ambleside in the English Lake District. It is best known as the home of the poet William Wordsworth from 1813 to his death in 1850. It is currently operated as a writer's home museum ...

('' Recollections of the Lake Poets'', edited essays, 1834–1840). His worship of Wordsworth turned sour after De Quincey married a local girl and the Wordsworths refused to meet her. Instead, according to Nicholson, he turned more to the local dalesfolk and "he got to know the dalesmen ''as people, as persons'', better than ever Wordsworth did". He reversed the practice of the Picturesque – instead of using the imagination to transform (and distort) the real, external world, he used the external world of the Lakes to feed his dreams and imagination.

Other writers

The beauty of the Lake District has also inspired many other writers over the years, beyond the core Lake Poets. These include their contemporaries Bryan Procter, Felicia Hemans, and

Walter Scott Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet (15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832), was a Scottish novelist, poet, playwright and historian. Many of his works remain classics of European and Scottish literature, notably the novels '' Ivanhoe'', '' Rob Roy ...

, as well as the labouring-class and slightly later John Close, who catered particularly to the growing tourist trade. Other poets include

James Payn James Payn (; 28 February 1830 – 25 March 1898) was an English novelist and editor. Among the periodicals he edited were '' Chambers's Journal'' in Edinburgh and the ''Cornhill Magazine'' in London. Family Payn's father, William Payn (1774/1 ...

Margaret Cropper Margaret Cropper (1886–1980) was a Westmorland poet, author and hymnist, who rivalled Norman Nicholson as the leading 20th-century Lake Poet. Life and writings The fourth of five children, Margaret Cropper was born into a long-established Qua ...

, and Norman Nicholson. In 1871, aged 48, having visited the Lakes many times,

John Ruskin John Ruskin (8 February 1819 20 January 1900) was an English writer, philosopher, art critic and polymath of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and pol ...

decided to settle down in

Brantwood Brantwood is a historic house museum in Cumbria, England, overlooking Coniston Water. It has been the home of a number of prominent people. The house and grounds are administered by a charitable trust, the house being a museum dedicated to Jo ...

, a house overlooking

Coniston Water Coniston Water in the English county of Cumbria is the third-largest lake in the Lake District by volume (after Windermere and Ullswater), and the fifth-largest by area. It is five miles long by half a mile wide (8 km by 800 m), has a ...

. Worn out in body and mind, he was looking for a restful escape, and it was this 'weariness and despair' that caught the sympathy of the Lake visitors. They, too, turned to the Lakes for comfort and rest,' rather than for the 'stimulus and excitement that had been the joy of the early travellers.'Nicholson (1995), p. 164. Ruskin, although he wrote little about the area, ended up taking on the mantle of Wordsworth as the 'new Sage of the Lakes, the Picturesque Figure, the Old Man of Coniston.' Nicholson saw him as the 'Picturesque Figure', 'for in him are combined its three main phases - the aesthetic, the scientific and the moral ...' His scientific approach to the rocks and water of the Lakes, Nicholson argues, was an attempt, not to understand his subject, but to teach people how to react to it in a 'practical and moral' way.Nicholson (1995), pp. 165-170.

References

Sources