Keats Northern Walking Tour June 25-August 6, 1818
Background Keats was 22 when he accepted Charles Brown’s invitation to undertake a walking tour of approximately 2000 miles through northern England and Scotland, with a diversion to northern Ireland. Keats letters and poems of the 1818 walking tour were intended to entertain his brothers and friends. Part of a tradition of travel writing started by Samuel Johnson and Boswell who wrote a guide book about their travels to Scotland. Popularity of travel literature at this time
Background Keats’s journey was defined in part by what he had read and heard about the places he was visiting The journey falls into essentially two episodes: the visit to the Lake District and the visits to Scotland and briefly Ireland. Relationship between the tour and Keats’s conception of himself as a poet. He saw the tour as essential to his development as a poet.
Map of Keats Walking Tour
Lancaster
Kendal
Map of the Lake District
The Lake District
Lake Windermere
Rydal Mount
Dove Cottage
Helm Craig
Castlerigg: The Druid Circle
Skiddaw
Scotland
Dumfries: St. Michael’s Churchyard Burns Mausoleum (Keats wrote “This mortal body” here)
Dundrennan Abbey
Map of Northern Ireland
Donaghadee
Belfast
Back to Scotland: Ailsa Craig
Alloway Robert Burns Cottage (Keats wrote “This mortal body of a thousand days here)
Glascow Cathedral
Loch Lomand
Mull
Iona
Staffa
Fingal’s Cave
Oban
Ben Nevis (Keats wrote “Read me a lesson muse)
Loch Ness
Inverness Beauly Priory
Inverness (Keats took coach from here to return to London)
Epilogue Keats was back in London by August 18. He returned early because he was ill. He found his brother Tom critically ill and took care of him until he died in December. Keats began writing “Hyperion.”