Dorothy Wordsworth

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DW is chiefly remembered for her Romantic-period journals, especially for her descriptions of the detail of nature, landscape, growth, and seasonal change. The journals, however, are equally remarkable for observing the doings of people: both the precise circumstances and the personal pleasures of the rural poor and vagrants. DW was also a travel writer, and interest has been growing in her thirty or so very interesting poems extant. Besides writing these poems, she exerted profound if unquantifiable influence on the poetry of her brother William .
Image of Dorothy Wordsworth from a painting by S. Crosthwaite, 1833, at Rydal Mount, Cumbria (home of herself and her brother's family during all of her later life). All that can be clearly seen of her clothing is a cap with ruffled edges and a large bow, and a scarf or shawl. She looks directly at the viewer. The lower part of the portrait, not visible here, shows spectacles and an open manuscript book on her lap and a little white dog at her feet.

Milestones

Christmas Day 1771

DW was born at Cockermouth in Cumberland, the only girl and middle child in a family of five.
Moorman, Mary. William Wordsworth: A Biography. Clarendon Press.
1: 6-7

Between 14 May 1800 and 16 January 1803

DW wrote her Grasmere journals.
Wordsworth, Dorothy. Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth. Editor Selincourt, Ernest De, Macmillan.
1: 37, 188

23 April 1802

Dorothy Wordsworth celebrated Coniston Fells as in their own shape and colour—not man's hills, but all for themselves, the sky and the clouds, and a few wild creatures.
Wordsworth, Dorothy. Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth. Editor Selincourt, Ernest De, Macmillan.
1: 137

New Year's Day 1835

DW welcomed the New Year with a characteristic diary entry that notices the weather, the emotional state of her family (and the deaths of friends), and the potentially healing power of nature.
Moorman, Mary. William Wordsworth: A Biography. Clarendon Press.
2: 490

25 January 1855

DW died at Grasmere after twenty years of variously-interpreted physical but especially mental decline, said by some to be arteriosclerosis and by some to be Alzheimer's.
Moorman, Mary. William Wordsworth: A Biography. Clarendon Press.
2: 607-8
Shattock, Joanne. The Oxford Guide to British Women Writers. Oxford University Press.

Biography

Birth and Family

Christmas Day 1771

DW was born at Cockermouth in Cumberland, the only girl and middle child in a family of five.
Moorman, Mary. William Wordsworth: A Biography. Clarendon Press.
1: 6-7

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