{"id":6037,"date":"2023-04-19T10:34:08","date_gmt":"2023-04-19T17:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/hortlib\/?post_type=book&p=6037"},"modified":"2024-02-09T11:26:52","modified_gmt":"2024-02-09T19:26:52","slug":"versed-in-living-nature-wordsworths-trees","status":"publish","type":"book","link":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/hortlib\/book\/versed-in-living-nature-wordsworths-trees\/","title":{"rendered":"Versed in Living Nature: Wordsworth’s Trees"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"In the preface of\u00a0Versed in Living Nature,<\/a> Peter Dale and Brandon Chao-Chi Yen describe the contents: \u201cWe visit many of Wordsworth\u2019s trees and explore their meanings and implications, personal, physical, cultural, religious, historical and political.\u201d To their great credit, they do all of that in 320 pages.

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The index under \u201ctrees\u201d lists 58 varieties, with multiple pages for many, especially the oak and yew. Each tree is located in William Wordsworth\u2019s poems. (It helps to have a little knowledge of the poems, but it\u2019s not necessary).

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The trees are also connected to the poet\u2019s activities, his schooling, his years in the Lake District of England, his travels. Special attention goes to the people in his life, chief among them Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Wordsworth\u2019s sister, Dorothy. Dale and Yen quote her often, reinforcing her importance to his poetry.

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Among others they meet, the novelist Sir Walter Scott appears almost as a side note during a visit to Scotland. The book is quite a literary Who\u2019s Who of the British literary scene.

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Adding to the breadth of the book are references to Dale and Yen\u2019s visits to Wordsworth sites. In commenting on a scene with four yews in \u201cA Tradition of Darley Dale, Derbyshire,\u201d for instance, they note that only three survive today, and they are hard to find.<\/div>\n
Very helpful are the contexts in which all these trees are placed. Some are political (e.g., the Napoleonic war), some economic (the Highland Clearances), some literary (the controversy over the Ossian poems).

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Wordsworth was also a gardener. At Dove Cottage he \u201cbegan to learn about gardens not as a gentleman dilettante but as someone who would supply cabbages for the kitchen\u201d (p. 132). He learned enough to gain a reputation as a garden guru, someone sought for advice on horticultural matters.

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Building on all the above, the authors develop Wordsworth\u2019s ideas and how his trees connect to his understanding of Nature as both physical and transcendent. It\u2019s a very impressive accomplishment.<\/div>\n
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Reviewed by Priscilla Grundy in the Leaflet<\/em>, Volume 10, Issue 5, May 2023<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the preface of\u00a0Versed in Living Nature, Peter Dale and Brandon Chao-Chi Yen describe the contents: \u201cWe visit many of Wordsworth\u2019s trees and explore their meanings and implications, personal, physical, cultural, religious, historical and political.\u201d To their great credit, they do all of that in 320 pages. The index under \u201ctrees\u201d lists 58 varieties, with multiple pages for many, especially the oak and yew. Each tree is located in William Wordsworth\u2019s poems. (It helps to have a little knowledge of…<\/p>\n

Continue reading Versed in Living Nature: Wordsworth’s Trees<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","keyword":[22,287,1174],"class_list":["post-6037","book","type-book","status-publish","hentry","keyword-reviews","keyword-trees","keyword-trees-in-literature"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/hortlib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/book\/6037"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/hortlib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/book"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/hortlib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/book"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/hortlib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/hortlib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"keyword","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/hortlib\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/keyword?post=6037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}