SOURCE: Pascoe, Judith. “The Spectacular Flâneuse: Mary Robinson and the City of London.” The Wordsworth Circle 23, no. 3 (summer 1992): 165-71.

In the following essay, Pascoe suggests that Robinson's poetry offers a romantic, idealized depiction of London that was based upon the poet's limited observations from her carriage, a necessary means of travel that prevented an awareness of the “grubbier exigencies of her surroundings.”

You know well how great is the difference between two companions lolling in a post chaise, and two travellers plodding slowly along the road, side by side, each with his little knapsack of necessaries upon his shoulders. How much more of heart between the two latter!

(W. Wordsworth to the Rev. Robert Jones, Descriptive Sketches, 1793)

To Walking Ladies

Should the impetuosity of a hackney coachman, the jostlings of a loaded porter, or the staggerings of a careless buck, drive you into the mud, on no...