Excursion to Wordsworthshire : A Victorian Family in the Lakes

The perfect companion to our current special exhibition ‘To the Lakes!’, this exclusive edition published by the Wordsworth Trust includes a full facsimile of the Johnson family’s original journal, recounting their 1844 visit to the Lake District to follow in Wordsworth’s footsteps (and even glimpse the poet himself), at the conjunction of railway tourism and William Wordsworth’s full renown as poet laureate. With a full facsimile of the journal and sketches held exclusively in our collection, it includes a transcription, introductory essay and commentary by scholar Cecilia Powell, and a reproduction of the map from Wordsworth’s Guide used by the Johnsons.

Early in the railway age, William Wordsworth mused wistfully in a letter from London to his family in the north, ‘O that there was a railway to take me to Kendal or Lancaster or Preston’. On an August day eight years later, after the ‘iron road’ had reached many parts of England, the Johnson family from Essex caught a train at Euston station and, within little more than twenty-four hours, were gazing in rapture at their first view of mountain scenery. The illustrated record of their 1844 sojourn in the Lake District, now in the Wordsworth Trust collection, contains an engaging account of their adventures, often enriched by their use of Wordsworth’s own Guide to the Lakes and enlivened by unique glimpses of the poet himself and members of his family.