On December 9^th at 9:05am, Dr. Kristin Pond’s English 3351: Literary Networks in the Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Centuries course will be presenting their Great Exhibition. This is a class project which requires students to explore what artifacts, including original letters, manuscripts and books, photographs, and actual objects exist at the Armstrong Browning Library related to each student’s assigned author.

The exhibition will be on display in the Hankamer Treasure Room for the entire morning December 9^th, 2019.

To prepare for the exhibition, students wrote a short biography of their author and practiced analyzing an artifact for what it reveals about their author. A sample of one student’s preliminary research follows.

John Keats

The April 1818 edition of The Quarterly Review reads “Keats is unhappily a disciple of the new school [of] Cockney poetry; which may be defined to consist of the most incongruous ideas in the most uncouth language (1).”

Before John Keats reached worldwide fame, he could not escape being a subject of harsh criticisms such as the sentiment above. The Quarterly Review, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, and other prominent literary magazines all branded Keats into a pejorative group known as the Cockney school. This group included English writers such as Leigh Hunt, William Hazlitt, and Percy Shelly, and they were all collectively criticized for a number of shaky reasons. Keats in particular was attacked because of his lower-class upbringing; an editor of The Quarterly Review particularly disapproved highly of the working class meddling with intellectual forms such as poetry. The Review’s editor labels Keats an ‘uneducated and flimsy stripling’ and slams Endymion as an “imperturbable drivelling idiocy” before concluding that “It is a better and wiser thing to be a starved apothecary than a starved poet; so back to the shop Mr John. (2)” We cannot be sure exactly how Keats reacted to this virulence. It’s possible that he was completely undeterred, and it is possible that it adversely affected his health (Shelly actually thought that the criticism contributed to his early death (3)). Whatever the reaction of Keats, the latter opinion was loud enough to cause Blackwood Magazine to go on the defense after his death, writing:

Mr. Keats died in the ordinary course of nature. Nothing was ever said in this Magazine about him, that needed to have given him an hour’s sickness; and had he lived a few years longer, he would have profited by our advice, and been grateful for it, although perhaps conveyed to him in a pill rather too bitter. Hazlitt, Hunt, and other unprincipled infidels, were his ruin. Had he lived a few years longer, we should have driven him in disgust from the gang that were gradually affixing a taint to his name. His genius we saw, and praised; but it was deplorably sunk in the mire of Cockneyism (4).

Although having never corresponded to Keats (not surprising as she was only fourteen when he passed away), Elizabeth Barrett Browning was a staunch believer that the heavy criticism of Keats lead to adverse effects later on in his life. She detested how the “Cockney School” writers, especially Keats, had scurrilous attacks lobbed at them. Even when she later figured out the identity of one of the anonymous authors who took part in the harsh criticism was someone she respected, she still sided with Keats and said they erred in their criticism. She pitied the poet greatly for being “slain outright & inglouriously by the quarterly review’s tomahawk (5)”. As a poet herself Elizabeth Barrett Browning must have known the importance of a poet’s reputation. Keats was financially unstable throughout his life, and his all his earnings came from his poetry. In this sense, his reputation was not just his reputation, but also his living. Seeing a fellow poet slandered caused a justifiable outlash in several of Browning’s letters.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning could see that people did not recognize Keats’ genius. To Browning, Keats was a “grand exception from among the vulgar herd of juvenile versifiers. (6)” Keats was “a seer… Who [wrote] the things you were speaking of yesterday. (7)” He was too ahead of the times to really be appreciated at the start of the nineteenth century. To Browning, the world did not deserve such a prominent and determined poet as Keats. She notes “as singers sing themselves out of breath, he sang himself out of life (8).” Keats put every last ounce of effort into crafting his work, and nowhere was a similar sentiment expressed by his ignorant critics. According to Browning, “Nobody who knew very deeply what poetry is… could draw any case against [Keats]” (9). Keats’ critics did not hold the intellectual ability to truly appreciate his work, making their criticism against the poet inevitable. Browning felt that Keats’ critics’ imaginations could not allow them to ever dream up what Keats, “a poet of the senses” could (9). The dream expressed in “Eve of St Agnes” or anything else so creatively imagined was simply not accessible to their closed minds. Those who criticized Keats were unable to attain such “senses idealized” (9). To Browning, Keats was simply “a fine genius, – too finely tuned for the gross dampness of our atmosphere. (8)”

That Elizabeth Barrett Browning shouted such praise for someone she did not know personally might seem strange and surprising. That said, Browning had definitely become knowledgeable about his work as numerous references to Keats’ writing are sprawled throughout her letters. Robert Browning had a period where he would read Keats to a sick friend every two days, so his work was definitely present in Elizabeth’s life. But still, she never knew him personally (10). Browning’s literary circle did help fill in some knowledge of Keats’ personality, but ultimately, she was left to judge Keats based on his work alone. Sadly, this means that the connection between Keats and Elizabeth Barrett Browning was solely Elizabeth’s posthumous praise for and defense of Keats. The strength of her defense speaks to the genius of Keats’ writing, and how great writers have the potential to influence and inspire and communicate even after their deaths.

To sum up, Elizabeth Barrett Browning felt as if there were already enough burdens weighing down on Keats’ life without the criticism, as the poet’s life leads one to experience “wearing anxieties” regardless of how one’s work is received. Yet sadly Keats died before his work was honored; consequently, this makes Browning ask whether praise is necessary, and even if Keats would have been jealous of the future fame of his works. Browning obviously cannot ask for Keats’ answer, but she dreams something akin to this: Praise would just be “redundant to his content” that Keats got from the joy of creating and the “exercise of art” (11).  There is comfort in such thinking.

Numbered Sources

1. Wilson, John. “Review of Keats’s Endymion.” Quarterly Review, Apr. 1818, pp. 204–208.
2. Lockhart, John. “Endymion Review.” Quarterly Review, Apr. 1818, p. 524.
3. Shelly, Percy. “Preface.” Adonais, Methuen & Co., 1821, pp. 3–4.
4. Wilson, John. “Lord Bryon and His Contemporaries.” Blackwood Magazine, 1828, pp. 403–404.
5. Browning, Elizabeth. “Letter 866.” Received by Mary Mitford, 26 Oct. 1841, London.
6. Browning, Elizabeth. “Letter 1672.” Received by John Kenyon, Aug. 1844, London.
7. Browning, Elizabeth. “Letter 2025.” Received by Robert Browning, 7 July 1846, London.
8. Browning, Elizabeth. “Letter 1029.” Received by Benjamin Haydon, 20 Oct. 1842, London.
9. Browning, Elizabeth. “Letter 2025.” Received by Robert Browning, 7 July 1846, London.
10. Browning, Elizabeth. “Letter 4252.” Received by Anna Brownell Jameson, 5 October 1858, Paris.
11. Browning, Elizabeth. “Letter 1829.” Received by Robert Browning, 3 Feb. 1845, 50 Wimpole Street.

Additional Sources

Keats, John. John Keats. Edited by Elizabeth Cook, Oxford University Press, 1990.

Browning, Elizabeth. “Letter 4252.” Received by Anna Brownell Jameson, 5 October 1858, Paris.

Browning, Elizabeth. “Letter 2472.” Received by Robert Browning, 7 July 1846, London.

Browning, Elizabeth. “Letter 2025.” Received by Robert Browning, 7 July 1846, London.

Browning, Elizabeth. “Letter 1706.” Received by Mary Mitford, 3 Sept. 1844, London.

Browning, Elizabeth. “Letter 1105.” Received by Mary Mitford, 30 Dec. 1842, London.

On December 9^th at 9:05am, Dr. Kristin Pond’s English 3351: Literary Networks in the Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Centuries course will be presenting their Great Exhibition. This is a class project which requires students to explore what artifacts, including original letters, manuscripts and books, photographs, and actual objects exist at the Armstrong Browning Library related to each student’s assigned author.

The exhibition will be on display in the Hankamer Treasure Room for the entire morning December 9^th, 2019.

To prepare for the exhibition, students wrote a short biography of their author and practiced analyzing an artifact for what it reveals about their author. A sample of one student’s preliminary research follows.

William Wordsworth

Biography     

William Wordsworth was born in 1770 in England, and he would grow up to become a well-renowned poet by the time of his death in 1850. Achieving that honor, however, required a great deal of financial strife first. Orphaned at an early age, impoverished throughout his youth, and dissatisfied with his college education at Cambridge, Wordsworth fumbled through his earlier years (Mason, 1-3). He had always been interested in writing, but he did not produce much poetry during this period. However, he did develop a very close relationship with his sister Dorothy. As adults, they eked out an impoverished existence together in a house called Racedown in Dorset, England. It was here, under the influence of his likewise literary-minded sister, that Wordsworth grew into the title of poet, increasing his output by four times as much as he had written in earlier years. As Worthen writes, “…having discovered a way of working with [Dorothy], he now preferred not to write without her” (Worthen, 113-117). This clearly drew Wordsworth into a particularly close emotional bond with his sister. Perhaps more significantly, this new era in his writing might never had come about if not for Dorothy’s support. As he continued writing, she critiqued his work, and “it was [her] propensity for aesthetic judgement, as well as her unwavering emotional support, that Wordsworth most respected, and her comments inspired him to improve his writing” (Mason, 5). Dorothy played a formative role in Wordsworth’s beginnings as a poet, pushing him ever-forwards toward greatness.

As Wordsworth developed as a poet, he formed another important relationship: a friendship with Samuel Coleridge. The two writers “were immediately enamored with each other,” and they soon moved within a few miles of each other. The two (and Dorothy) spent a lot of time together, often taking long walks during which they wrote and talked about poetry (Mason, 7). All evidence points to the fact that Wordsworth and Coleridge were fast friends with much in common. They clearly stimulated each other’s minds and got along quite well, not to mention the fact that Coleridge aided Wordsworth in getting his early work published. Also, in her biographical work on Wordsworth, Emma Mason describes in detail the writing relationship between Coleridge and Wordsworth: “Coleridge… tasked Wordsworth with the writing of a new Miltonic philosophic epic.” This would grow into Wordsworth’s autobiographical poem, “The Prelude.” The pair also co-wrote a book of poetry, aptly titled Lyrical Ballads, and traveled Europe together (Mason, 8). Coleridge was not only a good friend but a good writing partner, bolstering Wordsworth’s writing and, like Dorothy, propelling him towards progress. Their friendship began to sour, however, as Coleridge became addicted to opium and began to push Wordsworth away. Finally, Coleridge broke off the friendship over petty hearsay (Mason, 10-11, 16). Wordsworth, though hurt by this abrupt end to such a long and devoted friendship, moved on and kept writing.

In 1802, Wordsworth would marry Mary Hutchinson (after having a love-affair and a child with a Frenchwoman, Annette), and the two had what appeared to be a loving, relatively happy marriage. The two lived with Dorothy, who remained close with her brother throughout their lives (Mason, 10-13). And, after years of little financial success as a poet, Wordsworth gradually gained widespread recognition as a great poet. In 1843, Wordsworth became Poet Laureate of Britain, the crowning glory of several literary honors that he received. He died in 1850 (Mason, 22).

Letters

In an 1808 letter to Dorothy Wordsworth (and his wife, Mary), Wordsworth begins the letter by addressing his “Dearest Loves.” He recounts his travels, focusing in particular on the people he has encountered and how they are doing. He mentions Coleridge multiple times, clearly expressing worry about Coleridge’s health (by this time, the latter was well into his opium addiction). Wordsworth also writes that “Coleridge has just had a long Letter, in which is related the fate of Sally’s parents. It has much affected me, and we must do for Sally what we can” (Wordsworth, 1808). This letter is rife with evidence of affection towards Dorothy and Mary, and even more impressive compassion towards his old friend Coleridge and even towards his former servant, Sally. In this letter, Wordsworth comes across as a loving man who tries fervently to love and take care of those around him.

Interestingly, within the same letter, Wordsworth reveals his negative opinion on publishing his work. In distinct contrast to the gentle way he refers to those that he is familiar with, he writes of the “wretched and stupid Public.” He describes how, though he desires to use his writing to benefit the public, he still somehow detests the idea of publishing his work (Wordsworth, 1808). Here the reader receives an intriguing insight into why Wordsworth was slow to publish his work.

Although, as mentioned above, some of Wordsworth’s most significant literary attachments were to his sister Dorothy and to Samuel Coleridge, he also was connected to the Brownings. In a letter to John Kenyon, William Wordsworth references some poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning that Kenyon sent Mrs. Wordsworth, and he compliments Barrett Browning’s “Genius and attainments” (Wordsworth, 1839). In this letter, he reports his admiration for Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s intelligence and literary accomplishments. Though the indirectness of this compliment toward Elizabeth Barrett Browning might seem to suggest that they were unfamiliar with each other in person, a letter written three years prior (in 1836) disproves this idea. In this letter, written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning herself, she also describes Wordsworth in a complimentary fashion: “I… must have told you that one of my privileges has been to see Wordsworth twice. He was very kind to me, and let me hear his conversation…. His manners are very simple; & his conversation not at all prominent – if you quite understand what I mean by that” (Browning, 1836). It seems that the warm feelings and respect between William Wordsworth and Elizabeth Barrett Browning were definitively mutual. Barrett Browning also gives the reader further clue into Wordsworth’s personality, describing him as kind and “simple,” which I interpret as meaning that he came across as modest despite the literary fame he had achieved by that time. Though Wordsworth and Barrett Browning may not have known each other well, they did appear to deeply respect each other, both in personality and in literary accomplishments.

Works Cited

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett to Julia Martin. December 7^th, 1836 in The Brownings’ Correspondence, https://www.browningscorrespondence.com/correspondence/621/?rsId=168911

Mason, Emma. The Cambridge Introduction to William Wordsworth, Cambridge University Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bayloru/detail.action?docID=564466.

Wordsworth, William to Dorothy Wordsworth. March 26^th, 1808 in Oxford Scholarly Editions Online, https://www-oxfordscholarlyeditions-com.ezproxy.baylor.edu/view/10.1093/actrade/9780198185239.book.1/actrade-9780198185239-div2-10

Wordsworth, William to John Kenyon. February 26^th, 1839 in The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, ed. Ernest de Selincourt et al., 2^nd ed., https://www.browningscorrespondence.com/supporting-documents/1147/?rsId=168867&returnPage=1

Worthen, John. Wiley Blackwell Critical Biographies : Life of William Wordsworth: a Critical Biography, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/bayloru/detail.action?docID=1603102.

On December 9^th at 9:05am, Dr. Kristin Pond’s English 3351: Literary Networks in the Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Centuries course will be presenting their Great Exhibition. This is a class project which requires students to explore what artifacts, including original letters, manuscripts and books, photographs, and actual objects exist at the Armstrong Browning Library related to each student’s assigned author.

The exhibition will be on display in the Hankamer Treasure Room for the entire morning December 9^th, 2019.

To prepare for the exhibition, students wrote a short biography of their author and practiced analyzing an artifact for what it reveals about their author. A sample of one student’s preliminary research follows.

Dorothy Wordsworth

Early Life

Dorothy Wordsworth was born in 1771 on December 25^th in Cockermouth Cumbria. She was the third and only girl out of five children in the family. She was only two years younger than her brother, William Wordsworth. When her mother died at a young age, Dorothy and her brothers continued to live a happy childhood. However, the death of their father happened unexpectedly, leaving them in financial instability and forcing Dorothy and her siblings to live with various relatives. Dorothy was sent to live with her aunt Elizabeth Threldkeld in Halifax, West Yorkshire. At age 25, she was finally able to reunite with her brother William, at Racedown Dorset in 1795.

Poetry and Writings

In 1797 Dorothy and William moved together to Alfoxden House in Somerset, located near Samuel T. Coleridge’s home. The three formed a close friendship. Dorothy started to write about her life with William and Coleridge in her journals, the first being titled The Alfoxden Journal. The journal entries were utilized by William and Coleridge on their collaborated work, Lyricall Ballads. The poems drew heavily from the descriptions of nature Dorothy reported in the journals. However, Dorothy wrote in her journals for her own pleasure, and never aspired for them to be published or to be a famous author like her brother. William’s dependency on Dorothy’s journal entries continued for the rest of his career, as she was able to provide detailed description of nature.

Having been close friends with Coleridge, the three traveled to Germany in 1798-1799. Dorothy recounts their trip in a journal titled, Journal of Visit to Hamburgh and of Journey from Hamburgh to Goslar. In 1799, both William and Dorothy moved into Dove Cottage of Grasmere. Four volumes of journals titled The Grasmere Journal (1800-1802) is known to have the best of Dorothy’s writing. The journals contain entries of the life she lived at Dove Cottage, and the relationship between her, her brother and fellow poet, Samuel Coleridge.

During their time at Dove Cottage, the three would take long walks in the woods, composing poems, and letters. Supposedly, the three would walk among the hills, and lay on the ground pretending they were dead as if in a “trance-like” state.

Later Years

The relationship between Dorothy and her brother was undoubtedly very close. However, when William married Mary Hutchinson in 1802, it is noted Dorothy wore Mary’s ring the night before the wedding ceremony. She gave it back to William in the morning, but did not attend the ceremony. She secluded herself in the attic of Dove Cottage, and not long after, stopped keeping up with her diary entries. Later, historians claimed she was filled with anxiety of being the replaced companion of her brother.

Dorothy never married or intended to get married as she felt too old for her age of 31 years. Instead, Dorothy stayed at Dove Cottage with her brother and Mary for the next 20 years helping them raise their children. There, she wrote books and poetry for the children.

In 1813 the family moved to Rydal Mount where Dorothy continued to travel, write letters, journals, and poetry. In 1829 she fell seriously ill to fever and her health declined from then on. In her last years, its noted she slipped in and out of hallucinations, but was capable to recite Williams poetry. She died at the age of 83 in 1855.

Letters

• Letter to Joshua Watson

This particular letter was written many years after Dorothy’s time in Grasmere, in 1820. At the time she was at Rydal Mount, still living with William and his family. The letter suggests Dorothy’s dependency on William, as she mentions he is the reason she is writing it. She writes about William and how he has been doing, as if she was catching up with an old friend. However, Dorothy does not mention herself or give any personal life update. Only that she is glad to hear from Mr. Watson and his brother.

“My Brother feeling himself stronger and more comfortable this morning than he was yesterday said to me “I think you should write to Mr Watson—and I very much wish to know how he is himself — It is with great pleasure that I avail myself of my Brother’s hint, as an excuse for troubling you a second time.”

• Letter to Samuel T. Coleridge

A letter was written to Samuel T. Coleridge, in later February of 1799. At this time, Dorothy, William, and Coleridge were traveling in Germany. In the letter, it seems that Coleridge traveled to Gottingen Germany, on his own, leaving William and Dorothy back in the town of Goslar.

In this letter, Dorothy recounts the walk her and William took through the Hartz forest. She describes the trees and natural scenery with lengthy description, recalling minute details. The vivid details she provided was probably utilized for Coleridge and his poetry. She updates Coleridge of their time Goslar, as though they were great friends. She also mentions how excited her and William were once they received letters from him.

What’s interesting, is that Dorothy does not sign her name at the end of the letter, highlighting that her and Coleridge were on a friendly basis without the need for formality.

“Some of the pine trees are extremely beautiful. We observed that when they seemed to be past maturity, and perhaps sooner in a close situation their boughs from which had before ascended, making an acute angle with their trunk, descend till they shoot out horizontally or make an obtuse angle with the upper part of the tree.”

• The Grasmere Journal Entry-Monday October 4^th, 1802:

This journal entry, recounts Williams marriage to Mary Hutchinson and Dorothy’s feelings. It is clear that Dorothy is uncomfortable with the fact her brother is getting married. She wears the brides ring to sleep the night before they wed and decided not to show up to the ceremony. This suggests Dorothy almost feels replaced by Mary to her brother. She copes with her feelings by retreating to the attic of their house and shortly after their marriage, Dorothy stops writing in her journal.