Six Letters from Greece

Six previously unpublished letters from the archives of the British Library, London, by the young scholar Christopher Wordsworth (1807-1885), nephew of William, detailing his travels around newly-independent Greece in 1832/3. With an introduction and notes by Charles Plouviez, these letters back to England (four to his father, Christopher, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, one to Mrs Louisa Gurney Hoare, wife of the banker, and one to his cousin Dora at Rydal Mount, Cumbria) paint a series of vivid picture of life, travel, and social conditions in a free Greece; they are also important documents for researchers and those interested in Christopher Wordsworth's two celebrated monographs which resulted from this tour: Athens and Attica (1836) and Greece: Pictorial, Descriptive, & Historical (1839). Contents: Introduction; Letter One (29 July 1832): 'Safely in Greece!' or rather British Corfu; Letter Two (25 August 1832): The Ionian Islands: tracking Odysseus on Ithaka; Letter Three (incomplete; October? 1832): 'Oh! Where, Dodona! is thine aged grove?'; Letter Four (27 November 1832): Attica, Argolis and some islands; Letter Five (18 January 1833): From Mount Parnassus to Rydal Mount; Letter Six (19 March 1833): Leaving King Otho's sad country; Notes.