The Gang: Coleridge, the Hutchinsons, and the Wordsworths in 1802

Over a dramatic six-month period in 1802, William Wordsworth, S. T. Coleridge, Wordsworth's sister Dorothy, and the two Hutchinson sisters Sara and Mary formed a close-knit group whose members saw or wrote to one another constantly. Coleridge, whose marriage was collapsing, was in love with Sara, and Wordsworth was about to be married to Mary. Throughout this extraordinary period both poets worked on some of their finest and most familiar poems, Coleridge's 'Dejection: An Ode' and Wordsworth's 'Immortality Ode'. In this fascinating book, John Worthen recreates the group's intertwined lives and the effect they had on one another. Drawing on the group's surviving letters, poems and Dorothy's diaries, Worthen throws new light on many old problems. He examines the pre-history of the events of 1802, the dynamics of the group between March and July, the summer of 1802, when Wordsworth and Dorothy visited Calais to see his ex-mistress and his daughter Caroline and the wedding between Wordsworth and Mary in October of that year. In an epilogue he looks forward to the ways in which relationships changed during 1803 and in the years to come. John Worthen is Professor of D. H. Lawrence Studies at the University of Nottingham.