The Wordsworth Summer Conference, founded by Richard Wordsworth in 1970, remains the least utilitarian, most congenial, most conversational, and least sedentary conference in the academic world. It offers a unique blend of full-scale lectures, well-spaced papers with generous discussion time, and a significant experience of Grasmere and Lakeland.

 

Grasmere 2011
a selection of fourteen lectures and papers from the last conference
(including Ann Wroe on the bicentenary of 'The Necessity of Atheism', Stephen Gill on 'Wordsworth's Sequels' and Mary Favret on 'The General Fast and Humiliation, and Felicity James on Mary Hays) is now available from Lulu.com at £12.95

 

 

Keynote Lectures for 2011 (in running order):

 

Part 1: 1-5 August

 

Richard Gravil (the Foundation) Mr Thelwall's Ear

Stephen Gill (Lincoln College, Oxford) 'Two Consciousnesses': Wordsworth's Sequels

Richard Brantley (Florida) Emily Dickinson's 'Natural Methodism'

Frederick Burwick (UCLA) 'Transitory Actions' in The Borderers

Michael O'Neill (Durham) Shelley's Defences of Poetry: Shelley's Birthday Lecture

Ichiro Koguchi (Osaka) Wordsworth's Utilitarians

Sarah Zimmerman (Fordham University) Hazlitt's Lectures and the Work of Mourning

 

Part 2: 5-11 August

 

Ann Wroe (The Economist) Shelley's 'Necessity of Atheism' - 200 Years Young

Nora Crook (Anglia Ruskin University) (Re)addressing Poems

Peter Kitson (Dundee) Wordsworth, Coleridge, the Macartney Embassy and the Anglo-Chinese Garden

Jeff Cowton (The Jerwood Centre) Strengths and Potentials: the Wordsworth Trust's Collections

Kelvin Everest (Liverpool) The Embassy to China

Mary Favret (Bloomington, Indiana) 'The General Fast and Humiliation': tracking feelings in wartime
Felicity James (Leicester) Women, Life-Writing and Romanticism

 

Main Features

 

Stay 5 or 10 nights

7 excursions, 7 fell-walks, 6 to 14 lower level walks

14 keynote lectures and 30-32 research papers

 

For full details of accommodation and prices please download the pdf Prospectus

•   Either 4 or 9 full days in Grasmere (two parts, of 5 nights each, with a changeover day)
•   Registration fee: £225 for both parts; £175 for one part (rising to £250/200 on 1 May)
•   Full Board Hotel prices for 10 nights, from £475 to £875: see Prospectus
•   Youth Hostel prices, from £340: see Prospectus
•   Some apartments for three may be available: p.o.a.
•   Excursions to Levens Hall, Sizergh Castle, Rose Castle, Hadrian's Wall
•   Up to seventy miles of fell walking including (probably) Pillar by the North Traverse

 

Registration

 

All participants must register for the whole of Part 1, or Part 2, or both and should do so by 30 April 2011. Fees will rise on 1 May. Because both resident and non-resident places are limited, early registration is advised. Residential costs are payable in full by 25 May, after which date refunds of fees or other costs cannot be guaranteed (participants are therefore advised to take out travel insurance). 

Format: The conference is in two parts of 4 full days each, with a changeover day on Saturday 6  August. For fuller information see the draft programme.

Costs: The non-resident and registration fee, which includes up to seven excursions, offers exceptional value at £225 for ten days (£175 for five days) if paid by 30 April. Fees rise to £250 (£200) on 1 May for late registrants. Full Board at the conference hotel is available at prices ranging from £480 to £875 (for ten nights), and accommodation at the YHA from £352 (dinner only) to £457 (full board). For full details and all prices see the downloadable Pdf Prospectus.

Call for Papers: we invite papers on all aspects of William Wordsworth, his contemporaries and the Romantic period.  The Conference will include a bicentenary panel and debate about Anna Letitia Barbauld's poem 'Eighteen Hundred and Eleven' and related papers will be welcomed. 2011 is also the bicentenary of 'Sense and Sensibility', Robert Bloomfield's 'Banks of the Wye', Scott's 'Don Roderick', Shelley's 'Necessity of Atheism' and the second edition of Mary Tighe's 'Psyche'. During the Conference the 'Shelley's Ghost' exhibition will be hosted by the Wordsworth Trust at Dove Cottage and there will be opportunities to visit this. Among our excursions will be an all day visit (on changeover day) to Rose Castle, Lanercost Priory, and Hadrian’s Wall. Rose castle, former residence of the Bishops of  Carlisle, was visited and admired by both Wordsworth and Coleridge. This was where John Keats's friend Benjamin Bailey was ordained in July 1818, just before his conversation with John Lockhart that led to the 'Cockney School' essay on Keats. The all-day walk is likely to be one of two classic walks to the Western Lake District, climbing Bowfell and Scafell Pike or Pillar, by the North Traverse, from Honister Pass.

Proposals: 250 word proposals for papers of no more than 2750 words together with a brief unformatted c.v. should occupy no more than 2 sides of A4 (they will be copied into a composite file). Please do not send as a pdf. Please e-mail to the Conference Director Nicholas Roe at wordsworthsummerconference@gmail.com by 15 April 2011. All other enquiries should also be e-mailed to this address.

Bursaries: Please see the separate announcement of bursaries offered for the 2011 Conference.
 

Advice on Getting to Grasmere

 

Conference Director: Nicholas Roe

Conference Administrator: Stacey McDowell

 

wordsworthsummerconference@gmail.com

A History of the Conference with 45 colour photographs is now available from Lulu.com at £9.99