‘If it is not like what it is, it is what it ought to be. I have only made it picturesque.’

Beccabunga Veronica is rich, handsome, and more than a little eccentric. Obsessed with botany (and with finding a husband), she lands in Keswick during her tour of the Lakes determined to have the full picturesque experience, gathering flowers, views, and material for her romantic novel.

Sir Charles Portinscale is rich, handsome, and will do almost anything to escape Veronica’s clutches. He, too, is touring the Lakes: variously disguised as servant, botanist, and travelling salesman, he and his valet scheme to outwit her and snatch a moment alone with Sir Charles’s true love, Lydia.

As a fantastic cast of characters converges on the King’s Head Inn, they little know what the English Lakes have in store for them.

James Plumptre published The Lakers in 1798, a comic play gently satirising Lake District tourism, then in its infancy, and the fashion for botany. In 1999 it received its first performance, in the Lakeland town of Keswick where it is set. The play has previously been available only in a facsimile of the first edition; this reading edition features annotations identifying the people, places and botanical terms which appear in the play, and a short introduction.

The Lakers is available from Amazon.