Literature of the Lake District
1. Beatrix Potter
The world’s most famous children’s writer bringing us the famous Peter Rabbit. Potter has sold over 250 million copies of the book. She was also a pioneer of flogging merch! Peter Rabbit was the first fictional character to have a patented stuffed toy.
Potter became an renowned Herdwick sheep breeder. She was the first female president-designate of the Herdwick Sheep breeders' Association. She is credited by some as being pivotal in stopping the Herdwicks dying out during this period.
Her knowledge of fungi also made her become known in the field of mycology. Her work was large ignored (as she was a woman) and is only now being fully reviewed for its insights.
When she died in 1943 she left 14 farms, all their sheep and 4000 acres of land to the National Trust
2. William Wordsworth
One of the greatest Romantic Poets of all time; Romantic Poet doesn’t mean all love – it describes a movement for a great love of nature, hatred of industrialisation and a profound distrust of the governments and leaders. Wordsworth’s 'Daffodils' poem beginning “I wander’d lonely as a cloud” has got to be up their for the most famous poems of the region.
His semi-autobiographical poem Prelude though is perhaps more interesting with one extract describing his ‘trembling hands’ after stealing a boat. He becomes overwhelmed by the craggy mountain that comes into sight however once he’s in the middle of the lake and his world never seems quite the same again. You’ll be happy to know the boat is returned safely. Many however view this extract of a young man testing the limits and trying something new, as more than passing a resemblance of a description of losing one’s virginity. One line does state that ‘lustily I dipp’d my oars into the silent Lake’, hmm…
Wordsworth famously did not get along with his family. His relationship with them is said to be what drove his isolation into nature and the fells. Perhaps unfortunately for him, h is buried with his family in Grasmere.
3. John Ruskin
Ruskin was interested in a bit of everything. Philosophy, ornithology, art, literature, botany, education and most importantly conservation. He said "the beginning of all my own right art work in life, . . . depended not on my love of art, but of mountains…’
Ruskin was passionate conservation. He discussed the importance of smokeless zones and green belts and campaigned for them. In 1871 Ruskin bought Brantwood near Coniston. He is buried in Coniston’s churchyard.
4. Arthur Ransome
Ransome learned sailing on Coniston and never looked back. His children’s books, Swallows and Amazons is set on Wild Cat Island, which is believed to be based on Peel Island which you can still visit on Coniston. The great mountain Kanchenjunga (in the book – not the one in Nepal) is thought to be based on the Old Man of Coniston.
5. John Cunliffe
If you don’t know Cunliffe, you will know Postman Pat. John Cunliffe wrote the Postman Pat stories based on his time in the Lake District. In 1979, whilst teaching in Kendal, he applied unsuccessfully for a director's job with the BBC. At a lunch following the interview was asked if he could write a series for children set in the countryside.
The inspiration came from the local Cumbrian countryside. Greendale was based Longsleddale, and the Greendale post office was inspired by Beast Banks post office, in Kendal.
6. Norman Nicholson
Less known but what a writer. Nicholson writes simple, direct poetry often in the common language of the people he writes about. He doesn’t write from the tourist’s view of the fells and much of his work is about mining, quarrying and the heavy industries of the area.
Norman Nicholson looked to the geology itself for inspiration “to look at the scenery of Cumberland and Westmorland without trying to understand the rock is like listening to poetry in an unknown language – you hear the beauty of the sounds, but you miss the meaning. For the meaning is the rock.”
Nicholson's didn’t write about Ambleside and Grasmere, but about the industrial West of the area that dominates where the mountains meet the coast. Check out his poem Windscale for a great example of this.