Unlike Coleridge, Southey or De Quincey, Wordsworth was a son of the Lakes, born in Cockermouth, just a few miles west of Bassenthwaite. In the mid-1750s he met Coleridge in Bristol, and the two men became great friends, and each an important influence on the other’s work. At the end of 1798 the two young poets published their collection Lyrical Ballads, (to read more about the Lyrical Ballads, click here) then rewarded themselves with a very cold trip to Germany. On their return to England, Wordsworth decided that it was time for him to move back to Cumbria, in the company of his loyal sister, Dorothy; and Coleridge (and his long-suffering wife Sara) followed close behind. The Wordsworths lived at Grasmere, the Coleridges ten miles away at Greta Hall in Keswick.

These first years back at the Lakes gave Wordsworth what is probably his single most enduring image. In 1802, William and Dorothy were walking by Ullswater, saw a host of golden daffodils - and a poem was born. (Dorothy, alas, was removed from the story, and William is left wandering poetically "lonely as a cloud".)

Wordsworth and Coleridge passed these next Lakeland years visiting one another, and writing poetry. The Lyrical Ballads had broken new poetic ground, in part through Wordsworth’s plain-spoken poems of powerful and mysterious nature, and simple rural life; his years in the Lakes would profoundly influence the development of this style.

Dorothy recorded her happy years with her brother in her "Grasmere journal", which vividly describes the poets and their appreciation of the landscapes that surrounded them:

Thursday 22nd. – A fine mild morning. We walked into Easedale. The sun shone. Coleridge talked of his plan of sowing the laburnum in the woods. The waters were high, for there had been a great quantity of rain in the night. I was tired and sate under the shade of a holly tree that grows upon a rock, and looked down the stream. I then went to the single holly behind that single rock in the field, and sate upon the grass till they came from the waterfall. I saw them there, and heard William flinging stones into the river, whose roaring was loud even where I was. When they returned, William was repeating the poem: - ‘I have thoughts that are fed by the sun.’ It had been called to his mind by the dying away of the stunning of the waterfall when he came behind a stone…

Wordsworth's massive epic poem, The Prelude, which he worked on for years in the Lakes, is considered by many to be his masterpiece. Addressed to Coleridge, it’s an autobiographical study; some of the most memorable pieces deal with his Lakeland boyhood.

Charles and Mary Lamb travelled up to Keswick to spend a few weeks too. Then the Southeys came up to visit (Edith Southey and Sara Coleridge were sisters), and shared Greta Hall, eventually taking possession of it after the Coleridges left. Southey would live here for more than 40 years.

In 1817 this group – Coleridge, Wordsworth and Southey – were first referred to as the "Lake School" (though de Quincey insisted that they had never really been a "school", as such). By 1819 they were already the targets of Byronic wit, with the dedication to Don Juan referring to “Bob Southey” and “all the Lakers”.