O Joy for me!: Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the Origins of Fell-Walking in the Lake District 1790-1802

Until the mid-eighteenth century, Britain’s barren mountains were regarded with fear by all thoughtful people. The romantic movement, with its cult of the ‘sublime’ and of the ‘picturesque’, modified this perception, and the mountainous regions of Wales, the Lake District, and even Scotland, became fashionable to visit and to admire for their ‘beauty, horror and immensity’.

But these tourists never left the well-beaten and recommended path. They did not venture into the hills themselves. Onl...