‘Tree Mountaineers’: Arboreal Materiality on the Fells in the Lakeland Guides of William Wordsworth and Harriet Martineau

Abstract

ABSTRACT This ascending line of enquiry will pay close attention to how, through their nineteenth-century Lakeland writings, William Wordsworth and Harriet Martineau attached meaning to the continued presence and perceived role of trees in the landscapes of the English Lake District. The authors wrote about the region when increased numbers of landowners were planting trees for aesthetic, agricultural, and financial purposes on their land, ranging from the villa garden to the fell-side plantation. In this context, this analysis will consider the authors’ perceptions of historical upland tree cover, their aesthetic evaluation of particular planted and self-seeded spaces, and how individual specimens are sites of natural and cultural convergence shaped by the ‘wildness’ of the fells. Focusing on literary Lakeland trees – as discussed by Wordsworth, Martineau, and their circle – this article illustrates an ecological and arbori-cultural understanding of the environment that shifts, in accordance with elevation, from the valley floor up to the mountain top.