In February 1805 the Earl of Abergavenny set sail in convoy from Portsmouth for a voyage to India and China, captained by John Wordsworth, the younger brother of the poet William Wordsworth. More than 400 passengers and crew members were on board. Only three days later, separated from the convoy by stormy weather, the ship struck the notorious Shamble shoal in Weymouth bay and sank. Two-hundred sixty people drowned, including the captain. From the harrowing accounts of the survivors and the detailed official reports of the disaster, The Wreck of the Abergavenny brilliantly recreates this tragic event and its impact on William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge, Charles Lamb, and many others.

The Wreck of the Abergavenny

History

Hayter, Alethea

Europe

Pan/Macmillan

In February 1805 The Earl of Abergavenny, one of the largest of the East India Company's ships, set sail in convoy from Portsmouth for a voyage round the world to India and China. Her captain, John Wordsworth, was the younger brother of the poet William Wordsworth. On board were more than 400 passengers, troops and crew and a rich cargo of luxury goods and silver dollars. Only three days later, separated from the convoy by stormy weather, the ship struck the notorious Shambles Shoal in Weymouth Bay and sank, drowning 260 souls including her captain.From the harrowing accounts of the survivors and the detailed official and press reports of the disaster, The Wreck of the Abergavenny brilliantly recreates this tragic event and its contemporary impact. Alethea Hayter centres the narrative on a single dramatic historical event and puts it in the context of the literary world of the day. John Wordsworth's death devastated his brother William, his sister Dorothy and his sister-in-law Mary and his friends Coleridge, Charles and Mary Lamb, William Wilberforce and many others. Their grieving memories, and the effect of the tragedy on Wordsworth's art and view of life, conclude this powerful story, which shows how a catastrophe is transformed from first reports and contemporary reactions into historical record and poetic myth.

Wreck of the Abergavenny

World

MACMILLAN PUB. LTD.

Does the habit of taking drugs make authors write better, or worse, or differently? Does it alter the quality of their consciousness, shape their imagery, influence their technique? For the Romantic writers of the nineteenth century, many of whom experimented with opium and some of whom were addicted to it, this was an important question, but it has never been fully answered. In this study Alethea Hayter examines the work of five writers - Crabbe, Coleridge, De Quincey, Wilkie Collins and Francis Thompson - who were opium addicts for many years, and of several other writers - notably Keats, Edgar Allan Poe and Baudelaire, but also Walter Scott, Dickens, Mrs Browning, James Thomson and others - who are known to have taken opium at times. The work of these writers is discussed in the context of nineteenth-century opinion about the uses and dangers of opium, and of Romantic ideas on the creative imagination, on dreams and hypnagogic visions, and on imagery, so that the idiosyncrasies of opium-influenced writing can be isolated from their general literary background. The examination reveals a strange and miserable region of the mind in which some of the greatest poetic imaginations of the nineteenth century were imprisoned.

Opium and the Romantic Imagination

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Univ. Of California Pr.

A Sultry Month Scenes of London Literary Life in 1846

London: Faber and Faber

Does the habit of taking drugs make authors write better, or worse, or differently? Does it alter the quality of their consciousness, shape their imagery, influence their technique? For the Romantic writers of the nineteenth century, many of whom experimented with opium and some of whom were addicted to it, this was an important question, but it has never been fully answered.   In this study Alethea Hayter examines the work of five writers - Crabbe, Coleridge, De Quincey, Wilkie Collins and Francis Thompson - who were opium addicts for many years, and of several other writers - notably Keats, Edgar Allan Poe and Baudelaire, but also Walter Scott, Dickens, Mrs Browning, James Thomson and others - who are known to have taken opium at times. The work of these writers is discussed in the context of nineteenth-century opinion about the uses and dangers of opium, and of Romantic ideas on the creative imagination, on dreams and hypnagogic visions, and on imagery, so that the idiosyncrasies of opium-influenced writing can be isolated from their general literary background. The examination reveals a strange and miserable region of the mind in which some of the greatest poetic imaginations of the nineteenth century were imprisoned.

Opium and the romantic imagination

FABER

Faber Faber Inc

Horatio's version

Faber and Faber Ltd.

In the spring of 1804 Coleridge sailed to the Mediterranean in the hope of restoring his health, recreating his poetic energies and solving his emotional problems. During the voyage he kept a very detailed diary, and from this and from his and his friends' letters Alethea Hayter has painted a close-up portrait of Coleridge - both the outer and the inner man - at a comparatively little studied moment of his life, but a pivotal one. It was also an increasingly critical period in the Napoleonic War, and the movements of warships and convoys in the Mediterranean, and the problems of Nelson - personal as well as strategic, and in some ways parallel to Coleridge's - are interwoven with the narrative. Sara Hutchinson, the Wordsworths, Southey, the Lambs and Coleridge's other friends at home are also shown going about their affairs amid their anxieties about him during the six weeks while he travelled through storm and calm to reach an intellectual and emotional destination which was not the one he set out for. As those readers already familiar with Alethea Hayter's work would expect, A Voyage in Vain combines the pleasures of thoroughly researched biography, and criticism and social history, with the narrative sweep of a novel.

A voyage in vain;: Coleridge's journey to Malta in 1804

Faber and Faber

<p>Does the habit of taking drugs make authors write better, or worse, or differently? Does it alter the quality of their consciousness, shape their imagery, influence their technique? For the Romantic writers of the nineteenth century, many of whom experimented with opium and some of whom were addicted to it, this was an important question, but it has never been fully answered. In this study Alethea Hayter examines the work of five writers - Crabbe, Coleridge, De Quincey, Wilkie Collins and Francis Thompson - who were opium addicts for many years, and of several other writers - notably Keats, Edgar Allan Poe and Baudelaire, but also Walter Scott, Dickens, Mrs Browning, James Thomson and others - who are known to have taken opium at times. The work of these writers is discussed in the context of nineteenth-century opinion about the uses and dangers of opium, and of Romantic ideas on the creative imagination, on dreams and hypnagogic visions, and on imagery, so that the idiosyncrasies of opium-influenced writing can be isolated from their general literary background. The examination reveals a strange and miserable region of the mind in which some of the greatest poetic imaginations of the nineteenth century were imprisoned.</p>

<p>A brilliant and scholarly microcosm of a literary world.' Sunday Telegraph 'Alethea Hayter's skill and insight are outstanding, her work is a small masterpiece.' Anthony Burgess, The Bookman June 1846 was a month of fierce heat and political crisis in London. This sultry month was also a time of personal crisis for Carlyle and his wife, for Browning and Elizabeth Barrett and notably for the painter Benjamin Robert Haydon. A cross-section of the close-textured life of literary London in the 1840s is tellingly portrayed. Dickens, Tennyson, Browning, the Carlyles, Monckton Milnes, the actor Macready, Mary Russell Mitford, Wordsworth and Samuel Rogers frequently met during these sweltering weeks, particularly since many of them felt constrained to give parties for the best-selling German novelist, the preposterous, one-eyed Grafin Hahn-Hahn, and her travelling companion Oberst Baron Adolph von Bystram. The secret crises and decisive actions of the members of this group affected them all, as did the weather and the political situation. The catastrophe which overcomes Haydon is, however, the central leitmotif. A fascinating and stimulating book based on contemporary letters, diaries, memoirs and newspapers, A Sultry Month pioneered a new form of group biography when it was first published in l965, which has since influenced many writers and scholars.</p>

A Sultry Month: Scenes of London Literary Life in 1846

British & Irish

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Books by Hayter, Alethea

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The Wreck of the Abergavenny

Wreck of the Abergavenny

Opium and the Romantic Imagination

A Sultry Month Scenes of London Literary Life in 1846

Opium and the romantic imagination

Opium and the Romantic Imagination

Horatio's version

A voyage in vain;: Coleridge's journey to Malta in 1804

Opium and the Romantic Imagination

A Sultry Month: Scenes of London Literary Life in 1846