湖水地方旅行書に登場するワーズワス

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The rise of Lord Byron’s fame after the publication of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812) is legendary, as is seen from his words“I awoke one morning and found myself famous.” Unlike Byron, William Wordsworth came up to fame very slowly. His way to renown has been studied in detail in such works as Katherine Mary Peek, Wordsworth in England: Studies in the History of His Fame (1943; New York: Octagon, 1969), and John L. Mahoney, Wordsworth and the Critics: The Development of a Critical Reputation (New York: Camden House, 2001). But these works pay little attention to what the guidebooks to the Lake District say about Wordsworth. This paper is an attempt to fill this blank in the study of Wordsworth. From the latter half of the eighteenth century the scenery of the Lakes began to attract a large number of tourists, and many guidebooks were published for their use. The name of Wordsworth first appeared in one of these guidebooks in 1802. Since then the reference to him gradually increased in number. In this paper, for convenience sake, I have divided the period of 1802 to 1855 into three, and examined how Wordsworth is treated in the four major guidebooks published in each of these three spans of time. This examination shows that in the Lake District the fame of Wordsworth came to exert several peculiar influences, and they contributed much to turning this district to a land of Wordsworth.
2011-02-15