THE LAKE POETS AND PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY

Sep 19, 2026

Uploaded by Oliver

Explores how British Romantic writers, especially the Lake School, negotiated authorship as a form of labor within the marketplace rather than as a detached vocation. Analyzes the constructions of the professional gentleman and how Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge aligned poetic work with learned professions such as medicine, church, and law. Examines professional risk, evaluation, and competition shaping literary careers, alongside wider cultural forces from the late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages307

Reading Time7 h 53 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction: Professionalism and the Lake School of Poetry

Part I Romanticism, risk, and professionalism

1 Cursing Doctor Young, and after

Part II Genealogies of the romantic wanderer

2 Merit and reward in 1729

3 James Beattie and The Minstrel

Part III Romantic itinerants

4 Authority and the itinerant cleric

5 William Cowper and the itinerant Lake poet

Part IV The Lake school, professionalism, and the public

6 Robert Southey and the claims of literature

7 “Ministry more palpable”: William Wordsworth’s romantic professionalism

Notes

Bibliography

Index

This page intentionally left blank THE LAKE POETS AND PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY The idea that the inspired poet stands apart from the marketplace is considered central to British Romanticism. However, Romantic authors were deeply concerned with how their occupation might be considered a kind of labor comparable to that of the traditional professions. In the process of deﬁning their work as authors, Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge – the ‘‘Lake school’’ – aligned themselves with emerging constructions of the ‘‘professional gentleman’’ that challenged the vocational practices of late eighteenth-century British culture. They modeled their idea of authorship on the learned professions of medicine, church, and law, which allowed them to imagine a productive relationship with the marketplace and to adopt the ways eighteenth-century poets had related their poetry to other kinds of intellectual work. Brian Goldberg explores the ideas of professional risk, evaluation, and competition that the writers developed as a response to a variety of eighteenth-century depictions of the literary career. brian goldberg is Associate Professor of English at the University of Minnesota. cambridge studies in romanticism General Editors Professor Marilyn Butler, University of Oxford Professor James Chandler, University of Chicago Editorial Board John Barrell, University of York Paul Hamilton, University of London Mary Jacobus, University of Cambridge Claudia Johnson, Princeton University Alan Liu, University of California, Santa Barbara Susan Manning, University of Edinburgh Jerome McGann, University of Virginia David Simpson, University of California, Davis This series aims to foster the best new work in one of the most challenging ﬁeldswithin English literary studies. From the early 1780sto the early 1830saformidable array oftalentedmen andwomen took to literarycomposition, not just in poetry, which some of them famously transformed, but in many modes of writing. The expansion of publishing created new opportunities for writers, and the political stakes of what they wrote were raised again by what Wordsworth called those ‘‘great national events’’ that were ‘‘almost daily taking place’’: the French Revolution, the Napoleonic and American wars, urbanization, industrialization, religious revival, an expanded empire abroad, and the reform movement at home. This was an enormous ambition, even when it pretended otherwise. The relations between science, philosophy, religion, and literature were reworked in texts such as Frankenstein and Biographia Literaria;gender relations inA Vindication of theRights of Woman and Don Juan; journalism by Cobbett and Hazlitt; poetic form, content, and style by the Lake School and the Cockney School. Outside Shakespeare studies, probably no body of writing has produced such a wealth of response or done so much to shape the responses of modern criticism. This indeed is the period that saw the emergence ofthose notions of ‘‘literature’’ and of literary history, especially national literary history, on which modern scholarship in English has been founded. The categories produced by Romanticism have also been challenged by recent historicist arguments. The task of the series is to engage both with a challenging corpus of Romantic writings and with the changing ﬁeld of criticism they have helped to shape. As with other literary series published by Cambridge, this one will represent the work of both younger and more established scholars, on either side of the Atlantic and elsewhere. For a complete list of titles published see end of book. THE LAKE POETSAND PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY BRIAN GOLDBERG CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York [www.cambridge.org](www.cambridge.org) Information on

FAQs

What is the central concern about the inspired poet in British Romanticism?

The text treats the idea that the inspired poet stands apart from the marketplace as central to British Romanticism, while also emphasizing that Romantic authors were concerned with authorship as labor.

Which writers form the “Lake school” discussed in the book?

Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge are presented as the “Lake school,” aligning poetic work with emerging notions of professional identity.

How does the table of contents structure the book’s argument?

The contents divide the study into four parts, covering Romanticism, risk, professionalism; genealogies of the romantic wanderer; Romantic itinerants; and the Lake school’s professionalism and the public.

Sep 19, 2026

Uploaded by Oliver