Elizabeth’s Reviews > Radical Wordsworth: The Poet Who Changed the World > Status Update

Ah ha! The Cult of Sensibility is discussed. I was hoping this would be a good Jane Austen July companion and so it is. Fascinating about poet and writer Helen Maria Williams reporting via letters from the front lines of the French Revolution.

“Sometimes…we remember in singular flashes. Particular adventures and misadventures become part of family lore. And particular incidents take on symbolic force. These are what Wordsworth called the ‘spots of time’ that shape our identity…Wordsworth was the first master-poet of memory” (31).