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Epistolary Sketches: Landscapes in a Few Letters by Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats

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This paper concentrates on the way in which a few Romantic poets tried to share their first impressions of landscape when addressing close friends or relatives in familiar letters. In these letters, we do not have the poetic re-creation of an artefact inspired by a landscape; because letters are supposed to be spontaneous, they reflect perceptions and emotions with less aesthetic distance than a poem. As such they are revealing, not only of each writer's concerns and reactions, but also of the way his perceptions have been shaped by education and former experiences.