Dorothy Wellesley

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DW , writing in the earlier twentieth century, published a dozen volumes of poetry. She was also an editor of contemporary poetry, a letter-writer, critic, biographer and autobiographer. Her association first with the Hogarth Press and later with W. B. Yeats helped to give her a high profile. Her poetry typically looks back from the modern world, either to ancient history and prehistory, or to her own childhood. She voices a strong feeling for the natural world and a philosophic questioning about origins and principles.
  • BirthName: Dorothy Violet Ashton
  • Nickname: Dottie
    Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press, 1975–1980, 6 vols.
    4: 383

  • Married: Wellesley
    Her husband, as a duke's son, also had a courtesy title: he was Lord Gerald, and the socially correct form of her name was Lady Gerald Wellesley from the time of her marriage until his coming into the dukedom. Virginia Woolf uses this form in the acknowledgements preceding Orlando.
  • Pseudonym: M. A.
  • Styled: Lady
    She acquired the courtesy title of Lady Dorothy on her mother's remarriage to an earl.
    ; Lady Dorothy Wellesley
  • Titled: Duchess of Wellington
    DW added her title in brackets to her usual authorial form of her name on her Selected Poems, 1949.
  • Indexed:

Milestones

30 July 1889

Dorothy Violet Ashton (later DW ) was born at Heywood Lodge at White Waltham in Berkshire, the only daughter of her parents' marriage, and the eldest of her mother's children.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

1925

DW 's poetry volume Lost Lane included what became one of her most famous poems, Horses.
Wellesley, Dorothy, and W. B. Yeats. Selections from the Poems of Dorothy Wellesley. Macmillan, 1936.
17

By October 1955

DW published Early Light, a collection of her poems which she intended to embody everything that she wished to preserve.
Dated from the Bodleian Library acquisition stamp.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.

11 July 1956

DW died, a few years short of seventy, at her home at Penns in the Rocks at Withyham.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
“The Times Digital Archive 1785-2007”. Thompson Gale: The Times Digital Archive.
(12 July 1956): 13

Biography

Birth and Family

30 July 1889

Dorothy Violet Ashton (later DW ) was born at Heywood Lodge at White Waltham in Berkshire, the only daughter of her parents' marriage, and the eldest of her mother's children.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

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