ABSTRACT
The historian E. P. Thompson describes the ‘Pedestrian Excursion’ as ‘unremarkable’ and characterizes Thelwall’s authorial attitude in this text as ‘ambivalent’. The ‘Pedestrian Excursion’ will be rather more rewarding than Thompson’s characterization suggests. For its time, the Excursion, which appeared serially over several issues of the Monthly Magazine from 1799–1801, was certainly more innovative than has been acknowledged. The ‘Excursion’ is significant for its place in Romantic history. The ostensible reason for this journey in the summer of 1797 was to visit ‘an invaluable friend’, the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who was then living at Nether Stowey, Bridgwater, on the Somersetshire coast. The poet Gray, whose pocket-book was our travelling guide and companion, in his list of scenes and situations, has set down Twickenham with a star of admiration: but certainly we saw nothing there to admire.
