John Brown's 'Description of the Lake at Keswick' : New Clues and Clarifications

This article reports on the discovery of hitherto undocumented printings of John Brown’s 'Description of the Lake at Keswick'. Brown’s account of Keswick has long been recognised as a foundational document in the development of interest in the English Lake District during the eighteenth century. Such recognition notwithstanding, the history of Brown’s Description has not been fully documented and this lack of documentation has led to a number of mistaken assumptions about the text. The purpose of the present article is, therefore, not only to update the bibliographical record, but also to clarify a few inaccuracies in previous discussions of Brown’s account. In the process, the article explains how the early versions of Brown’s Description add a new dimension to the reception history of the text and, moreover, shift our understanding of the way the private circulation of unpublished print informed eighteenth-century appreciations of the Lakes region. The article includes an appendix, which presents a copy of the early printings of Brown’s text with a concise commentary.