Special Exhibitions

25 October 2008 - 14 June 2009

A Home Within A Home - Dove Cottage, Grasmere and the Wordsworths

The years spent in Grasmere, and in Dove Cottage in particular, were of great significance to the Wordsworths. It was here that Wordsworth wrote much of his greatest poetry and Dorothy kept her Grasmere journals. This exhibition will explore how the Wordsworths made Dove Cottage and Grasmere their home - how the garden and house were integral to family life and to Wordsworth's poetry. It will also show Wordsworth's concern for the local community and follow key poems to assess their impact at the time, and their relevance today.

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16 May - 31 August 2009

Tennyson and Wordsworth - two great poems of 1850

The exhibition celebrates the bicentenary of the birth of the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809 - 1892), who stands with Wordsworth as one of the greatest poets in the English language. Specifically, the exhibition will focus on the greatest works of these poets - Tennyson's In Memoriam and Wordsworth's Prelude - both of which were published in 1850. The exhibition will display the original manuscripts of these two great poems, as well as portraits of the two poets. The exhibition will also explore Tennysons connections with the Lake District, particularly, his close friendship with the Spedding family at Mirehouse, to which he was a frequent visitor. Recently conserved portraits of Tennyson and his publisher, John Moxon, shall also be on show. These works have been prepared especially for the exhibition.



2 July - 4 October 2009

Lear the Landscape Artist: tours of Ireland and the English Lakes 1835 and 1836

This exhibition will concentrate on Lear's early career as a landscape draughtsman up to his departure from England in 1837. This particular aspect of an otherwise well-documented life has never before received close attention. Drawing on unpublished letters and drawings that have never before been on public view, the exhibition will cover Lear's topographical tours to Ireland in August 1835, and to north Lancashire and the Lake District from August to October 1836. In attempting to reconstruct the artist's itinerary for the 1836 Lake District tour, the exhibition promises to be truly groundbreaking.