Recollections of the Lake Poets Recollections of the Lake Poets Recollections of the Lake Poets is a collection of biographical essays written by the English author Thomas De Quincey. In these essays, originally published in "Tait's Edinburgh Magazine" between 1834 and 1840, De Quincey provided some of the earliest, best informed, and most candid accounts of the Lake Poets, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Robert Southey, and others in their circle. Together, the essays "form one of the most entertaining of Lakeland books." De Quincey wrote from direct personal familiarity, having known all three men during the first two decades of the nineteenth century.
Bob Allen (surgeon) Bob Allen (surgeon) Robert Allen (1772-1805) was a British journalist and surgeon, famous for having introduced Robert Southey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. A contemporary of Leigh Hunt, Charles Lamb, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Bob Allen attended Christ’s Hospital and left the school as a Senior Grecian. He attended University College, Oxford, where, in his rooms, the historic meeting between Robert Southey and Coleridge took place. He was also an associate of Hazlitt and William Godwin, and a number of scholars have speculated that he was responsible for the acquaintance of Lamb and William Godwin. Coleridge lamented in a letter that