The Professional Poet in the Romantic Period: Unpublished letters from Samuel Rogers to William Wordsworth

Abstract

This article sheds new light on the literary relationship between William Wordsworth and the banker-poet Samuel Rogers through transcriptions of previously unpublished letters from Rogers to Wordsworth. The discussions in these letters reveal how both poets were responding to rapid changes in the commercial bookselling market. As a bestselling author with an extensive social network, Wordsworth sought Rogers’s advice for himself and also to discuss the potential publication of his sister Dorothy Wordsworth’s travel journals. The letters provide Rogers’s perspective on the material practice of writing and publishing in the Romantic period, revealing his knowledge about the transactions of other published authors. Consequently, sociability played a pivotal role in the forging and cultivation of professional poetic identity.