1. Keats Northern Walking Tour June 25-August 6, 1818

2. 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

3. 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.

4. Map of Keats Walking Tour

5. Lancaster

6. Kendal

7. Map of the Lake District

8. The Lake District

9. Lake Windermere

10. Rydal Mount

11. Dove Cottage

12. Helm Craig

13. Castlerigg: The Druid Circle

14. Skiddaw

15. Scotland

16. Dumfries: St. Michael’s Churchyard Burns Mausoleum (Keats wrote “This mortal body” here)

17. Dundrennan Abbey

18. Map of Northern Ireland

19. Donaghadee

20. Belfast

21. Back to Scotland: Ailsa Craig

22. Alloway Robert Burns Cottage (Keats wrote “This mortal body of a thousand days here)

23. Glascow Cathedral

24. Loch Lomand

25. Mull

26. Iona

27. Staffa

28. Fingal’s Cave

29. Oban

30. Ben Nevis (Keats wrote “Read me a lesson muse)

31. Loch Ness

32. Inverness Beauly Priory

33. Inverness (Keats took coach from here to return to London)

34. 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.”