From Bragg to Wainwright. How have the authors served the Lake District?

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From Bragg to Wainwright. How have the authors served the Lake District?

The Lake District in Cumbria has been the inspiration for many very famous authors; Wordsworth, Beatrix-Potter, Arthur Ransome and Wainwright to name but a few. Asked why they loved the area and why it inspired them and they would probably have answered that it was the solitude and the scenery, indeed Wainwright wrote at the end of one of his books:

What rich warm colours! I walked on golden carpets between golden tapestries, marvelling anew at the supreme craftsmanship that had created so great a loveliness, and at my own good fortune to be in its midst, enjoying a heaven I had done nothing to deserve. One cannot find the words to describe it…

A. Wainwright (1958)

He did however find the words to describe it and made his living from selling books about the Lake District. Admittedly he had intended the books to be withdrawn, as they became obsolete. The fact still remains nonetheless that the books were never withdrawn entirely and that the books are now still being sold as mementoes and guides of the Lake District.

…to place himself with me, in imagination, upon some given point; let it be the top of either of the mountains, Great Gavel [Gabel] or Scafell; or, rather, let us suppose our station to be a cloud hanging midway between those two mountains, at not more than a half miles distance from the summit of each, and not many yards above their highest elevation; we shall then see stretched at our feet a number of valleys, not fewer than eight, diverging from the point, on which we are supposed to stand, like  spokes from the nave of a wheel. First, we note, lying to the South-East, the vale of Langdale which will conduct the eye to the long lake of Windandermere stretched nearly to the sea; or rather to the sands of the vast long of Morcamb, serving here for the rim of this imaginary wheel;…

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William Wordsworth

There are two ways in which the authors on the lake District have served it. Firstly there are the authors who have tried to stretch the readers imagination about the scenery they are looking at and guide them on walks around the most scenic points in the Lake District. There are also those authors who write ‘coffee table’ books, i.e. those books which are not intended to be used in an informative means but solely for the occasional reader to look at and enjoy the scenery without ever having to visit.

        Although these ‘coffee table’ books are ...

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