SOURCE: Brewster, Elizabeth. “George Crabbe and William Wordsworth.” University of Toronto Quarterly 42, no. 2 (winter 1973): 142-56.

In the following essay, Brewster explores the link between Crabbe and Wordsworth, including how they influenced each other as writers, offers a critical comparison of certain works, and comments on previous critics' observations.

It is perhaps a pity that, if George Crabbe and William Wordsworth have their names associated together, it is usually in rivalry, and largely through the reviews of their works by Francis Jeffrey. The two poets had more in common than Jeffrey would have admitted, and might have had more sympathy with each other's work than they had if they had not been so frequently placed in opposition by their most influential reviewer.

Wordsworth, like Sir Walter Scott, made his first acquaintance with Crabbe's works as a schoolboy, from the extracts of The Village reprinted in the Annual Register in...