In 1803, Dorothy Wordsworth set out across Scotland with her brother William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, recording day by day the landscapes, roads, inns, ferries and people they encountered across the Scottish Borders and the West of Scotland. Published by A. MacKay (Publisher) Ltd in a 244-page edition now in its seventh printing, Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland 1803: Illustrated and Revised Pocket presents Dorothy Wordsworth's complete journal in clear, newly reset type paired with contemporary drawings and colour photographs of the places she described.
Travelling with William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1803
Unlike formal nineteenth-century guidebooks written from libraries, Dorothy Wordsworth's Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland was composed from firsthand observation on the road in 1803. Travelling alongside William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, she recorded the practical realities of early nineteenth-century Scottish travel (changing weather, rough tracks, river crossings, rural cottages and wayside hospitality) alongside precise descriptions of glens, lochs, waterfalls and historic ruins.
Her journal remains one of the foundational primary sources for nineteenth-century Scottish travel literature because it captures both the everyday texture of Scottish life in 1803 and the exact landscapes that shaped Romantic poetry. For general readers, walkers and undergraduate students of nineteenth-century literature alike, the day-by-day entries provide an immediate window into how travellers experienced Scotland before the railway age.
Across the Scottish Borders and the West of Scotland
The itinerary recorded in the 1803 journal carries the reader up through the Scottish Borders, across the Clyde valley and into the West of Scotland and the Highlands. Designed specifically as a pocket-sized paperback that fits into a coat pocket or travel case, this revised edition serves modern travellers retracing Dorothy Wordsworth's route through the Scottish Borders and the West of Scotland on foot, by road or by rail.
Many of the Clyde and West of Scotland landscapes that Dorothy Wordsworth observed at the dawn of the nineteenth century would, over the following hundred years, become the settings for the maritime, industrial and aeronautical histories documented elsewhere in the Charles E. MacKay catalogue, from Cardross and the Firth of Clyde in Soaring with Wings - Percy Pilcher Wants To Fly: For Dieter Dengler to the shipyards, workshops and airfields of Glasgow and the Clyde in Clydeside Aviation: Volume One The Great War and Shavings for Breakfast: The History of the Morris Furniture Company, Glasgow.
Why this illustrated seventh-printing edition was produced
Many circulating copies of nineteenth-century classics are unedited photographic reprints or print-on-demand scans suffering from cracked type, faded ink and missing letters. By contrast, Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland 1803: Illustrated and Revised Pocket was prepared as a proper litho-printed book with clean, newly set text throughout.
Across its 244 pages, Dorothy Wordsworth's text is supported directly by sharp colour photographs of the places she visited with her brother William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, together with contemporary historical drawings that show how those Scottish towns, stone bridges, ruined castles and glens appeared in the early nineteenth century. The sustained demand from readers and travellers alike has carried this edition into its seventh printing.
Read the full story
Order Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland 1803: Illustrated and Revised Pocket (ISBN 978-0957344327) for the 244-page seventh-printing pocket edition with clear reset text, contemporary drawings and colour photographs of the 1803 route. Readers exploring the later history of the Clyde and West of Scotland can also pair it with Soaring with Wings - Percy Pilcher Wants To Fly: For Dieter Dengler, Clydeside Aviation: Volume One The Great War and Shavings for Breakfast: The History of the Morris Furniture Company, Glasgow.