Introduction

In an article titled ‘A Continuous Force’, Ann Wroe claims that Wordsworth’s ‘presence has moulded the landscape as surely as streams and rain, so that the whole area round Grasmere, not just Dove Cottage, is a monument and museum to him’. ¹ There are many physical monuments commemorating Wordsworth – his houses, grave, memorial plaques and windows, statues and fountains – but for Wroe he is also an organic presence that has moulded and given meaning to the landscape. This is very much a mediated, literary vision of a landscape that is both similar to and utterly different from the one Wordsworth knew two hundred years ago. And yet Wroe’s commentary echoes a long tradition in which Wordsworth survives as an abiding presence in the Lake District landscape.