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30 November 2009
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Myths and Legends
Maid of Buttermere
Mary Robinson, the Maid of Buttermere

© Cumbria County Council, Carlisle Library
Putting beauty on the map

At the turn of the 19th Century, a 15-year-old girl from a small village in the Lake District found herself thrust into the limelight, her beauty touted as a tourist attraction. The Maid of Buttermere soon became an item in the itinerary of the new breed of Lake District tourists. Unwittingly, Mary Robinson had become part of a larger literary and cultural movement, for whom the Lake District and its ‘rustic’ inhabitants held a special place. The Romantic poets’ tussle with nature had found a maiden whose appearance and lifestyle personified its wholesome and desirable influence. Ultimately, her ‘discovery’ by the Laker tourists led to her becoming a victim at the hands of a dishonourable fraudster. More...

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Your comments

1 Dale Eccleston from Morecambe - 16 January 2004
"This place is brimming with pure poetic & intellectual geniuses: from William & Dorothy Wordsworth, to Coleridge, Ruskin and Beatrix Potter. Not forgetting bravey & patriotism - Such as Donald Campbell - true legend of Coniston. "




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