Recollections of a tour made in Scotland

On an extraordinary 663-mile journey through the Scottish lowlands and southwestern Highlands in the late summer and early autumn of 1803, Dorothy Wordsworth kept a journal. Traveling with her brother William and, for a short time, Samuel Coleridge, she recorded with warmth and wit the adventures, sights, and unspoiled romantic landscape of their trip. Her engaging journal, unavailable for many years, returns to print in this beautiful volume that provides remarkable black-and-white photographs of the Scottish scenes described. Carol Kyros Walker has captured the essence of these places in a photographic essay that follows each week of Wordsworth's journal entries. Walker also contributes an introduction to locate events of the journey within their historical setting and to explain the significance of this trip for the three participants; a discussion of Dorothy Wordsworth's skills as a writer; extensive notes to clarify her many allusions; and a map of the itinerary. Traveling in an eccentric Irish jaunting car -- a rudimentary horse-drawn vehicle -- the Wordsworth party encountered assorted strangers and a wild countryside. Wordsworth relates a rich series of vignettes -- a brutish ferryman beats her horse; solicitous Highland girls laugh as they choose dry clothes for her, and her brother writes a poem about them; and a hermit's cell near Killin, with its moss decorations, stuffed foxes, and wooden books covered with leather, fills her with wonder. Samuel Rogers and Walter Scott are alive in these pages, and a haunting mix of historical figures also appears, including Rob Roy, William Wallace, James Bruce, and Robert Burns.