Wordsworth’s Invigorating Hell: London in Book 7 of the Prelude (1805)

Abstract

We are accustomed to think of Wordsworth, to cite the opening of Percy Shelley’s sonnet dedicated to him, as the “Poet of Nature,” one to whom, as Wordsworth recalls in The Prelude, “The earth / And common face of Nature spake…/ Rememberable things” (1: 614–16).¹ The poet who spent his childhood and adolescence amidst the beautiful scenery of the English Lake District returned at the age of thirty to settle there permanently (in Grasmere) at the end of 1800. Wordsworth, however, is also the occasional poet of the city, and, as Nicola Trott reminds us, “the man who is popularly regarded as an unbudgeable Grasmere fixture… spends a surprising amount of time away from home. The confirmed ruralist is also an avid metropolitan, making regular sorties to London throughout his life,” visiting it for the last time in 1847, three years before his death (15).