‘Over Sands to the Lakes’:Journeys over Morecambe Bay before and after the Age of Steam

Donaldson, Christopher (2020) ‘Over Sands to the Lakes’:Journeys over Morecambe Bay before and after the Age of Steam. In: Sandscapes. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 163-178. ISBN 9783030447793

Abstract

This chapter responds to the theme of this collection by offering an exploration of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century representations of the sands of Morecambe Bay. Weaving together works of fiction and literary nonfiction, I consider the recurrent portrayal of Morecambe Bay as a threshold and a frontier. Specifically, I examine the reiteration of this conception of the Bay in the works of William Wordsworth, Ann Radcliffe, Edwin Waugh and others. Collectively, these accounts bear witness to a period of remarkable change in human encounters with Morecambe Bay that took place over the course of the nineteenth century. They offer insights into how the extension of a railway around the bay during the 1850s altered the way people experienced, understood, and represented the passage over the sands.