Wordsworth and his friends Robert Southey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge became known as Lake Poets not only because they lived in this area but also because its landscapes and people inspired their work.

[5] Wordsworth explained his goal to a reader in May 1810, saying, "What I wished to accomplish was to give a model of the manner in which topographical descriptions ought to be executed, in order to their being either useful or intelligible, by evolving truly and distinctly one appearance from another.

Joseph Wilkinson, (an expensive work, and necessarily of limited circulation,) is now, with emendations and additions, attached to these volumes; from a consciousness of its having been written in the same spirit which dictated several of the poems, and from a belief that it will tend materially to illustrate them.

Wordsworth begins this section as follows: In preparing this Manual, it was the Author's principal wish to furnish a Guide or Companion for the Minds of Persons of taste, and feeling for Landscape, who might be inclined to explore the District of the Lakes with that degree of attention to which its beauty may fairly lay claim.

For the more sure attainment, however, of this primary object, he will begin by undertaking the humble and tedious task of supplying the Tourist with directions how to approach the several scenes in their best, or most convenient, order.Wordsworth's emphasis on the word "Minds" reflects "his constant interest in subject-object interactions," evident throughout the book and in his poetry in general.

Next he embarks on a long comparison of Lake District scenery to the much-praised landscapes of Switzerland, although with this initial disclaimer (page 98):[4] Nothing is more injurious to genuine feeling than the practice of hastily and ungraciously deprecating the face of one country by comparing it with that of another ... fastidiousness is a wretched travelling companion; and the best guide to which in matters of taste we can entrust ourselves, is a disposition to be pleased.The description of an ascent of Scawfell Pike (now Scafell Pike) is copied from a letter written by Dorothy Wordsworth describing her visit to this mountain in 1818.

He includes in this section a long passage transcribed nearly intact from the 1805 journal of his sister Dorothy Wordsworth about a trip they took from their home in Grasmere to Ullswater (see Sélincourt footnote pp. 181–182).