The Gang

"The friendship between William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge was at its most intense during their year in Somerset, from 1797 to 1798. But John Worthen chooses to concentrate on 1802. During that year the friendship was under considerable strain, because Coleridge was having terrible problems with his marriage and was in love with Sara Hutchinson, Mary’s sister. Worthen’s book concentrates on the interactions of a scattered but closely-knit community — Coleridge, Sara and Mary Hutchinson, and William and Dorothy Wordsworth — following the story of the group up until Mary’s marriage with William, and ending in mid-flow. He tracks the relationships between these people, geographically, psychologically and creatively, by following the letters and poems they wrote to and for each other. If you choose a single year in a group’s life, and look at it really up close, you get something compelling, especially when members of the group are collaborating and in dialogue, as they were in this case. Because it’s such a microscopically detailed analysis, one gets a very full picture. For instance, Worthen takes the great ‘Dejection Ode’ of Coleridge, and Wordsworth’s ‘Immortality Ode’, looking at the poems as they were forming, investigating the manuscripts stage by stage. But that’s just one example among many. His book is a magisterial study of one year in the closely knit lives of this group. I have learned a great deal from his approach to group dynamics and creative process."