Rome shares an intense bond with the Romantic Poets.

The Royal Mail has issued a special set of stamps to mark the 250th anniversary of the birth of English Romantic poet William Wordsworth (1770-1850).

Wordsworth is joined on the stamps by nine other British Romantic poets: William Blake, Lord Byron, John Clare, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Mary Robinson, Walter Scott and Percy Bysshe Shelley.

The stamps feature an extract from each of the poets' best-known works, along with a monochrome design reflecting the theme of the poem.

The new stamps were the result of collaboration between biographer Jonathan Bate and The Chase, "an ideas-based creative consultancy" in the UK, with the striking lino-cut illustrations created by printmaker Linda Farquharson.

Ben Casey of The Chase said the text on the stamps was set in an ‘old-style’ Caslon font and blind-embossed on an antique press. The texts were then lit from the side and photographed by Peter Thompson, to capture the "debossing of the letterforms and the woven quality of the paper."

The stamps are on sale from today, 7 April, for details see Royal Mail website.

Romantic poets and Rome

The Romantic poets, of course, share a close bond with Rome, particularly Keats and Shelley whose final resting places are in the city's Non-Catholic Cemetery.

The Keats-Shelley House, the building at the foot of the Spanish Steps in which Keats died in 1821, is currently closed as a result of Italy's nationwide lockdown due to the Coronavirus emergency.

It recently restored the historic ceilings in its museum and library, which contains the apartment where Keats spent the final 14 weeks and two days of his short life.

Later this year the Keats-Shelley House plans to mark the 200th anniversary of Keats and Severn landing in Naples with a programme of commemorative events.