The Lake Poets were a group of English poets who all lived in the Lake District of England at the turn of the nineteenth century. As a group, they followed no single "school" of thought or literary practice then known. They were named, only to be uniformly disparaged, by the Edinburgh Review. They are considered part of the Romantic Movement.
The three main figures of what has become known as the Lakes School were William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Robert Southey. They were associated with several other poets and writers, including Dorothy Wordsworth, Charles Lamb, Charles Lloyd, Hartley Coleridge, John Wilson, and Thomas De Quincey.
The beauty of the Lake District has also inspired many other writers over the years, beyond the core Lake Poets. These include their contemporaries Bryan Procter, Felicia Hemans, and Walter Scott, as well as the labouring-class and slightly later John Close, who catered particularly to the growing tourist trade. Other poets include James Payn, and Norman Nicholson.
References
- De Quincey, Thomas. Recollections of the Lakes and the Lake Poets. Edited by David Wright; New York, Penguin, 1970.
- "William Wordsworth - The Lake Poets", 60 min VHS (1994) and DVD (2004), produced by Jule Gammond and directed by Stephen Gammond, contributors: Jonathan Wordsworth, Robert Woof, Pamela Woof, Molly Lefebure, Grevel Lindop and Ted Hughes.
