Wordsworth’s 1793 Journey to the West Country and Wales

Abstract

When William Wordsworth set off on a summer journey to the west of England and Wales in late June 1793 he was twenty-three years old and worldly in the way of someone who had travelled on the continent. His younger sister Dorothy described him at this time as ‘certainly rather plain than otherwise’, adding that he ‘has an extremely thoughtful countenance, but when he speaks it is often lighted up with a smile’ (Early Letters, 95). Letters, poetry, and recollections provide the broad outline of where he visited between the end of June and 27 August when he arrived at the home of his friend Robert Jones in North Wales (see Figure 9). But there are gaps of time about which nothing is known. Mark Reed’s chronology of Wordsworth’s life is sprinkled with ‘probably’ for this period. Tracing the journey becomes the risky effort of joining what is known with conjecture about Wordsworth at a period before he met Coleridge, before he shared his life with his sister, before Lyrical Ballads confirmed his poetical career. It is a remarkably self-sufficient, capable, independent, psychologically rich person who steps out of the frame.