Where It All Goes Down
Get ready friends because "The Solitary Reaper" whisks us away to the beautiful, scenic highlands of Scotland. The speaker is out walking around (he doesn't really say why) and happens upon a Scottish lady tending to her crops ("reaping"). Even though we only get a few details, we immediately conjure up a picture of a sparsely populated, rural area, which is exactly what the highlands of Scotland were like back in the early 1800s.
It was also chilly up there, the roads were bad (Wordsworth's sister talks all about that in this book), and even though the movies will make it seem like there were a bunch of people running around in kilts, it really wasn't like that. The fact that there are only two people in the poem gives us an idea of just how few people were up there, back in those days. The fact that the woman sings in Scots Gaelic adds an additional detail. Even though it was part of the British Empire, the northern part of Scotland was still a very different place, with a different history (people grouped themselves together in clans) and a different language. Of course, by 1800 things really had changed a lot, but "The Solitary Reaper" accurately reflects the fact some of Scotland's ancient heritage was still very much alive and kicking.
In addition to this little snapshot of rural Scotland, we also get some hints about just what England was like in those days, too. The speaker is a perfect example of how many English people felt about Scotland. He is intrigued and fascinated by the strangeness of the solitary reaper he encounters. For him, and for many other southerners, Scotland was an exotic place to check out in the same way that, nowadays, Amish communities in Pennsylvania are. The Wordsworths and Coleridge weren't the only celebrated writers to visit northern Scotland and then publish little write ups about it. For the details of another famous literary journey to Scotland, check this out.
An interest in Scotland, and the various rural communities that could still be found all over the British Isles, became very popular during the literary period we now call Romanticism. The larger setting or background for "The Solitary Reaper" is very much this literary movement, with its interest in solitary geniuses, the rural countryside, and its endless stockpile of poets like the reaper herself. (She sings an amazing song, which makes her a poet in the speaker's eyes.) In this way, the poem is a kind of meeting of settings: Wordsworth's England coming over to check out the reaper's Scotland.