A literary walking tour of Ambleside

A five mile walk in the footsteps of literary greats by Dr Penny Bradshaw. Ambleside’s literary associations date back to the rise of picturesque tourism in the 18th century. In the years that followed William Wordsworth’s arrival in nearby Grasmere in 1799, a host of writers were drawn to the Lake District. Celebrated poets and novelists, from John Keats to Charlotte Bronte, visited Ambleside and other writers, such as Thomas De Quincey and Matthew Arnold, had homes here. By the 1850s Ambleside was at the centre of a Victorian vogue for ‘literary tourism’, with visitors exploring the region through the writing it inspired. This Literary Walking Tour allows today’s visitor to experience the town in a similar way. The half-day walk takes in locations that were special to many writers and provides dozens of extracts and quotations from their works. Dr Penny Bradshaw is thematic lead for Cultural Landscapes within the Centre for National Parks and Protected Areas at the University of Cumbria. She is also Programme Leader for the MA in Literature, Romanticism and the English Lake District. Penny specialises in regional Romanticism and literary responses to place. Other recent publications include: Literary Lancaster (2016), Ann Radcliffe’s Observations During a Tour to the Lakes (2014), and The Lake Poems of John Wilson (2012).