Wordsworth and Railways

This chapter offers a wide-ranging reappraisal of the controversy provoked by the projected Kendal and Windermere Railway in the years 1844 to 1847. It re-examines Wordsworth’s motives for entering this controversy, the support and opposition he attracted, including some poetical ripostes, what he failed to see and where he was far-sighted. Frequently criticized as selfish, class-biased discrimination against mass-tourism, or welcomed as a dawn of modern environmentalism, Wordsworth’s anti-railway sonnets and letters published in the Morning Post were in fact more complex than has been supposed, and sometimes contradictory. Far from rejecting railways and technological invention, Wordsworth predicted a glorious future for steam power in terms that were, ironically, quickly appropriated by railway promoters to further their own aims. Ranging widely beyond the Kendal and Windermere Railway, the debate allowed Wordsworth to voice his opinions on scenery, transport, self-dependence, master-employee relations, local society and economy, aesthetics and prescient environmental considerations.