October 31st
Jeff Cowton (Curator of the Wordsworth Trust) will present “Learning from the Wordsworth Trust’s Collections.” Dove Cottage, at the heart of the English Lake District National Park, was the home of William Wordsworth (foremost poet of the Romantic age) during his most creative years. Here he wrote his autobiographical masterpiece “The Prelude”; it was also here that his sister Dorothy wrote her “Grasmere Journals.” The Wordsworth Trust owns the historic site and world’s greatest collection of manuscripts by the two writers and others of their family and circle, as well as an internationally important collection of first editions and Lake District guides and watercolors: 67,000 items in all. The curator’s role is to develop and care for the collection and, equally importantly, to create the greatest public benefit from them. This talk will explore the collections, their meanings, and the variety of ways in which learning can be gained from them. 