From the district of the lakes to Wordsworth Country

Today, Wordsworth is regarded as Wordsworthian scholar Ernest de Selincourt imagined him in 1906, not merely as “the prophet of Lakeland, but almost its first discoverer.” Yet Wordsworth’s Guide to the Lakes (1835) was preceded by more than a half century of popular travel writing about the region.

The Lake District attracted writers, artists, and tourists at least in part because it was remote and rural--the very opposite of urban, London life. Yet isolation was the quality that compelled travellers to grapple with the unique and diverse northerly scenery in relation to Europe and the world.

By comparing the local to foreign geographies, especially the Alps, the earliest travellers to the region placed the English Lakes within a global travel network.

On display here are case items from the Wordsworth Country exhibit held simultaneously at Simon Fraser University and Dove Cottage. In this part of the exhibit you will find a brief history of Lake District guidebooks, from the mid seventeenth century through to the early twentieth century. It was the language, ideas and images used in these guidebooks that influenced not only how travellers, then and now, saw the Lake District, but were to influence how people saw beautiful areas elsewhere such as those in British Columbia.

You will see the earlier guidebooks that influenced Wordsworth, his text for the Select Views that became the first edition of his own Guide to the Lakes, and those that came after and were influenced by Wordsworth.