This was a joy to read from the beginning to the end. It's a mixture of literary history, biography and memoir.
Adam Nicolson follows - literally - in the footsteps of Coleridge and William and Dorothy Wordsworth on their year-long retreat - from the summer of 1797 to June 1798 - to the Quantock Hills in Somerset. It covers probably one of the most important events in the development of English poetry.
This is the year the poets wrote the poems that were to become the Lyrical Ballads. A book that transformed English poetry from strict adherence to form and stylised language. Poetry dominated by intellect and reason.
Wordsworth and Coleridge wrote poetry plugged directly into the natural world, it was elemental, sensory and emotional. It captured the voices of real people and their struggles with the world. It was alive and vital. It celebrated the imagination.
So Nicolson walks where they walked - day and night, season by season. He reads what has survived of their letters, notebooks and journals during this time.
Nicolson observes the same landscapes the poet's visit. He visits the same woods and villages. He writes as they write - with a poets eye for detail and the mythological. The Quantocks appear to us as a sacred place. England is transfigured first by the poets and then again by Nicolson.
The book also presents us with character portraits of the two on the brink of their success. The solitary Wordsworth and the sociable Coleridge. He traces the arc of the relationship between Coleridge and Wordsworth. At first intense and positive and later fraught with tensions and conflicts.
And all the time Nicolson reminds his readers of the wider context - the war with France and the British authorities locking down the country, terrified of protest and the growing threat of revolution.
This is a book that beautifully evokes, reminding us - both readers and poets - that we are the cultural children of these men and women of genius.
Click here to buy the book online.
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