Some 18th and 19th century literary anecdotes

Arthur William Devis, “Gwyllym Llord Wardle”

William Hazlitt (1778 – 1830), the great literary scholar, was never afraid of upsetting a few people – even if threats of violence came along with it. “I am a metaphysician”, Hazlitt said, “and do not mind a blow; nothing but an idea hurts me.”

— Journals of Thomas Moore

Still more poems by Wordsworth

A deep distress hath humanised my soul.
– Elegaic Stanzas (1807)

Antoine-Jean Gros, Portrait of François Gérard, aged 20, 1790

One of the true greats, I’ve already profiled William Wordsworth but here are a few more pieces from his astonishing repertoire.

 

Shortlist: the 18th century

JMW Turner, ‘Fishermen at Sea’, 1796

At various points in our journey, I’ll be pausing to list some other works that I love, think are interesting, or just want to point out. These will just be lists, unless I feel like commentary, but they will point the way to yet more reading pleasure. There’s a lifetime of books out there, so why waste it?

More poems by Wordsworth

Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all Science.

-Lyrical Ballads (1800)

Can one ever have too much Wordsworth?

023. POEMS and THE PRELUDE by William Wordsworth (1798)

All things that love the sun are out of doors;
The sky rejoices in the morning’s birth;
The grass is bright with rain-drops;—on the moors
The hare is running races in her mirth;
And with her feet she from the plashy earth
Raises a mist, that, glittering in the sun,
Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run.
– from Resolution and Independence

William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850) was born into an England riding the waves of Empire. His father was a well-connected lawyer, and the Wordsworths were big fish in a fairly small pond. The children grew up in England’s Lake District, where William and his sister Dorothy took to reading and writing very early. As a boy, the young Wordsworth would learn sections of Shakespeare and Spenser by heart. An oft-emotional child, Wordsworth’s life was upended when his mother died in 1778, and he was sent – with his brothers – to Grammar School, while Dorothy was shipped off to relatives for the remainder of her childhood.