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Woof, Pamela (1988). Dorothy Wordsworth, Writer. Grasmere, Cumbria: The Wordsworth Trust. ISBN 0-951061-66-6.

  • Life section: birth, Cockermouth, third child, parents info, mother death, Threlkeld takes her in until May 1787, age 9 attends boarding school at Hipperholme, father death, guardians transfer her to day school in Halifax, required to leave Halifax and live with grandparetns in Penrith, uncle takes her to live with them at Norfolk, age seventeen has sunday school of nine girls, 1794 arrives in Halifax to visit 'aunt' and see William after three years absence for six weeks, meets William in Bristol, 1797 meets Coleridge and moves with William to Alfoxden and lives there until June 1798, keeps journal at Alfoxden and travels with William and Coleridge to Hamburg for summer (p. 7-9)

Life

[1]

  • Death of DW: buried in churchyard in England at Grasmere in the Lake District with William, William's wife, and other family, remembered for diaries not published until years after her death, started first journal in 1798, friendship with Coleridge and created Lyrical Ballads, end of 1799 Dove Cottage in Grasmere, year younger than William, parents died when children and she and William were close, lived in poverty, "cast-off clothes", "unconventional person" who took long walks in the country, never married, remained member of household when William married in 1802 (age 31), decided too old for marriage, rumours of incest with William baseless but close relationship, didn't attend William's wedding and eventually stopped keeping her diary, 1813 Wordsworths moved to Rydal Mount, D fell ill in 1829 and was an "invalid", age 60s-84 (death) "deepening haze of senility", William looked after Dorothy during his last years until his death in 1850, D journals first published in 1897.[2]
  • Grasmere journals: no job outside of house, no strict routine, journal conveys the "unpremeditated rhythms" of her and William's lives (p1), Tintern Abbey: "Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,/My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch/The language of my former heart, and read/My former pleasures in the shooting lights/Of thy wild eyes, Oh! yet a little while/May I behold in thee what I was once" (xiii), journal reflects moments of "overwhelming feeling", not writing for strangers but Wordsworth only (xv), private diary, daily life of a poet (WW) from his sister's pov and without focus on him, details of daffodils for WW, "She gave me eyes, she gave me ears", "Dorothy's way of seeing, when she purposively set out to produce a 'character', was to capture first of all the detail of appearance" (xvi), [interpretation of her goal w writing xvii], many revisions of the journal, dorothy's care was for william and the stress writing poems gave him, looked after WW, journal contents: (settling of house and garden, composition of poetry, WW marriage and the return), ends in early 1803 with completion of notebook,

Writing

Critical reception

Notes

  1. ^ MacLean 1932, p. 7.
  2. ^ Cavendish, Richard (January 2005). "Death of Dorothy Wordsworth: January 25th, 1855". History Today. Vol. 55, no. 1. Retrieved 27 March 2024.

Bibliography