1807–1813

Part II provides epistolary contexts for Wordsworth’s distinction between the ‘People’ and the ‘Public’, and his reflection on imaginative receptivity triggered by a sight of St Paul’s Cathedral through falling snow. A sequence of letters narrate the Beaumonts’ responses to Wordsworth’s composition of the set of ‘Inscriptions for the Grounds of Coleorton’. Lady Beaumont makes various reading recommendations to Dorothy and sends a copy of an unpublished ‘Account of an English Hermit’ by Thomas Barnard, which appears fully transcribed and annotated here. Part II also contextualizes the circulation and reception of Coleridge’s The Friend and includes references to his ‘Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton’. The section ends with insight into Beaumont’s intermediary role in Wordsworth’s appeal to Lord Lonsdale (William Lowther) for remunerative employment and his appointment, in 1813, as Distributor of Stamps.