Abstract
In 1883, at the fourth meeting of the Wordsworth Society, the charismatic Anglican clergyman Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley argued for the necessity of a permanent Lake District Defence Society (LDDS) to preserve the landscape so dear to Wordsworth. Rawnsley’s advocacy was so forceful that the Wordsworth Society joined en masse; ‘in the surviving list of members [of the LDDS] the whole of the Wordsworth Society is entered as a single item’ (Gill, Wordsworth and the Victorians 258). In 1891, Dove Cottage first officially opened to visitors, effectively as one of the first of the now-common house museums which commemorate writers’ lives (Garrett 178). Two years later, Rawnsley joined forces with Octavia Hill to combat threats to the Lake District; Rawnsley, Hill, and the gifted solicitor Robert Hunter are widely considered the three founders of the National Trust. ‘Without the drive of Wordsworthians the National Trust of 1895 would not have come into being’ (Wordsworth and the Victorians 258–60).
Published Version
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