Prologue: Mapping the Circle

Abstract

Near the coast of Somerset, on the rising ground of the Quantock Hills, stands Alfoxden, now a derelict country-house hotel, once the home of William Wordsworth, during the miracle year that produced Lyrical Ballads. According to the now-famous story of literary origins, it was while wandering the magical moon-dappled hills between Alfoxden and nearby Nether Stowey that the poet, his sister, and their newfound friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge set the terms and mapped the territory of English Romanticism. Their poetical pathways have been retraced and trodden so thoroughly since then, both literally and textually, that one might suppose there is nothing more to discover about The Friendship (Sisman) that did so much to shape our understanding of literary history.¹