One of two new historical novels being launched by the same author details the years spent by Lakes poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge at Greta Hall in Keswick.
Bethany Askew’s book ‘The Two Saras: Coleridge in Cumbria’ follows the four years when Coleridge moved to Greta Hall, where he should have had everything he needed. His wife Sara was pregnant again, the house was spacious enough for him to work in undisturbed and he was living close to his great friend and fellow Lakes poet William Wordsworth and his family in countryside that he loved.
But there was another Sarah up here in the north: Sarah Hutchinson. And as his already-shaky marriage began to fall further apart Coleridge found himself drawn more and more to her and the charmed Wordsworth circle.
This novel follows the launch of her “Three Extraordinary Years: The Coleridges at Stowey” which covers the three years that Coleridge lived in Nether Stowey in Somerset. The poetry he wrote at that time was influenced not only by the humble cottage he lived in and the beautiful countryside of the Quantock hills, but by his relationships with his wife Sara and William Wordsworth and his family, who moved to Somerset to be near Coleridge. His collaboration with Wordsworth on a book of poetry called Lyrical Ballads, is seen now as the birth of the English Romantic period.
Both books by Bethany, who hails from Somerset, are available from Bookends bookshop in Keswick. Orders can be taken over the phone and the books delivered. Call 017687 75277, email [email protected] – or order directly from the publishers Blue Poppy Publishing – no charge for postage and packing within the UK.
