by Sinéad O’Neill Melville was right when he wrote, of the Albatross, ‘that white phantom sails in all imaginations.’ It sailed then, and it sails still. Coleridge’s poem on the same subject also haunts the collective imagination. It has certainly caught my fancy, enough to make me want to create an opera. Even people unfamiliar […]

by Nicole Jacobsen As an intern primarily focused on the curatorial aspects of the Wordsworth Trust, I have the opportunity to work hands-on with many of the Trust’s manuscripts. During the past two months, I have been involved in a project to locate and transcribe all of Mary Wordsworth’s unpublished letters in our collection. The […]

by Pamela Davenport On a recent visit to Somerset, I rediscovered the beautiful Quantock Hills, which are characterised by deeply wooded combes and wonderful heathland covered with heather, and are truly deserving of their designation as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Visiting Coleridge’s cottage in Nether Stowey made me think again about Coleridge as […]

by Steven Matthews and Paul Whitty  Steven Matthews, poet, and Paul Whitty, composer, share some insight into their exhibition ‘Sounds of Wordsworth’, which was on display at the Wordsworth Trust throughout June 2017. This exhibition presented work from an on-going and evolving project to ‘map’ sounds in the landscape, as they continue at the sites […]

by Jeffrey Peters   In 1973, Harold Bloom’s Anxiety of Influence described the struggle of the Romantic poets to find a voice in a world dominated by Paradise Lost, but he did little to discuss the legacy of John Milton’s lesser poems. Just as the sun overwhelms the twinkle of distant stars, so too did […]

by Tiffany Francis   We had gorged on sticky ginger loaf until, feeling plump, we stepped out into the garden to admire the garlic mustard and bluebells drooped in the April air. Through the tall grasses we followed a pathway to the back of the garden where Samuel Taylor Coleridge himself sat reluctantly beneath that […]

by Sarah Doyle   As my husband, Allen Ashley, and I have each written a couple of articles for the Wordsworth Trust’s blog, we’d been invited to Rydal Hall in the Grasmere area of the Lake District, along with other blog contributors, for a weekend of talks, walks, and all things Wordsworth, kindly organised by […]

by Ellen O’Neill   “It has been estimated that at the time of Keats’ death, the combined sales of the three books published during his lifetime amounted to 200 copies.”  Andrew Motion, The Guardian, 23 January 2010   Yet here we are, two hundred years later, and the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association is running an international prize for […]