William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, two…

William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, two English Romantic poets long estranged over the latter's opium addiction, had become fully reconciled, touring the Rhineland together in 1828.

Dorothy Wordsworth, William’s sister and, for the past thirty-one years, companion and muse, suffers from a severe illness that in 1829 leaves her in a permanent semi-invalid state.