ABSTRACT
Robert Anderson and William Wordsworth—the poet with whom it is tempting to compare Robert Anderson—were born in 1770. Both men express, in their verse, a commitment to their native landscape and its people, and in 1798, both published poems titled 'Lucy Gray', drawing on a northern folk tale of doomed lovers. The first success of his career as a poet came in 1794, during his first visit to Vauxhall gardens. In 1796, Robert Anderson returned to Carlisle at the request of his aged and sickly father, finding work with Lamb, Scott, Foster and Co., a Carlisle printing firm. With the assistance of some unnamed friends, he published his first volume of verse, Poems on Various Subjects, at Carlisle in 1798.
