Lake District literature

For Wordsworth's Michael, 'the green valleys, and the streams and rocks' were 'like a book' preserving the memory of the work, the triumphs and crises of his life as a hill farmer. Loved landscapes acquire a human meaning, and for centuries the Lake District has fostered not only human life but a harvest of thought and literature whose effect has been felt far beyond this small corner of England. Many writers have lived here; others have come briefly to work or to rest. Some have exploited the place, some have hated it. Some who never came have been inspired by a place name, or the picture on a postcard. To link places with the writing they inspired or allowed, as this book tries to do, is to understand something about how people see and use landscape, and about how places enter people's minds, to change their ways of thinking and feeling.

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As for my 'coverage' of literature, I hope I have mentioned all the important matters that a reader might expect to find in a book of this sort, and I have tried to be systematic in dealing with significant minor writers. But the field is endless. Finally, my criteria have been personal and I have included what seemed interesting: scraps of weird information, traces of the quirkiness of human nature, good verse or prose in unlikely places, interesting writing by forgotten authors.

Throughout the task I have been haunted by thoughts of Coleridge, who (having been richly misled by Hutchinson's History of Cumberland and other topographical books) stigmatized 'all authors of tours, county histories &c' a category into which he would certainly have put this book as 'Damned liars, strong words but true.' Absolute accuracy is not attainable in human enterprises, but I can at any rate claim that this book contains no lies. I have driven every road mentioned here, I have walked every path; I have (almost) climbed every mountain. Except where I indicate otherwise, I have myself seen the things listed.

I hope the reader will enjoy these explorations as much as I did, and will take them further. It remains for me to thank the many people who have helped. First of all, two people must be named, either of whom could have written this book better than I have done. One is my friend, and for some twenty years colleague at Manchester University, Bill Ruddick. This book is just one product of that infectious enthusiasm for the Lakes and their literature which he has conveyed to so many colleagues and students. The other is Dr Robert Wool, Hon Keeper of collections at Dove Cottage, who unstintingly shared his encyclopedic knowledge of Cumbrian lore, and helped in countless practical ways.