The Most Important Year in the History of English Poetry

The Making of Poetry: Coleridge, the Wordsworths, and Their Year of Marvels | Adam Nicolson | Farrar, Straus and Giroux

In 1797 Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth retreated from English society to southwest England for a little over a year, settling in Dove Cottage near the Quantock Hills in Somerset along with Wordsworth’s wife, Sara, their children, and his sister, Dorothy.

Over the course of fifteen months, the two poets lived, dialogued, and wrote togethe…