Dorothy Wordsworth

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Standard Name: Wordsworth, Dorothy
Birth Name: Dorothy Wordsworth
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.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Family and Intimate relationships William Wordsworth
William was very close to his sister, Dorothy . They were separated in childhood following their mother's death, but reunited in 1794 to spend the rest of their lives together. Dorothy was immeasurably important to...
Health William Wordsworth
Compelled to return from France by lack of funds, he seems to have undergone some kind of emotional breakdown whose repercussions lasted more than a year, and from which he later felt his sister Dorothy
Wealth and Poverty William Wordsworth
A substantial legacy of nine hundred pounds from his friend Raisley Calvert , who died of consumption (tuberculosis) on 9 or 10 January 1795, changed the course of WW 's life, and also that of...
Family and Intimate relationships William Wordsworth
Throughout his marriage and his career WW shared his home with his sister Dorothy .
Friends, Associates Helen Maria Williams
On her return to Paris after Robespierre's death, HMW and Stone lived in a house (where she held her salon) on the Quai Malaquais. After peace was announced between England and France in 1801...
Textual Features Alison Uttley
Her diaries offer an apparently uncensored version of what she toned down in her autobiographical works: an internal world of great passion, where self-confidence and uncertainty, pride and self-pity, joy and anguish are intermingled.
Judd, Denis. Alison Uttley. Michael Joseph.
xii
Textual Production Muriel Spark
Spark's first Brontë project was a group biography of the whole family, including the parents. In June 1949 she felt like a pregnant tigress with this work. It was to be published by Lindsay Drummond
Textual Features Edith Sitwell
Sitwell chose two women from before and five from during the eighteenth century, ten from the nineteenth century, and two from her own.
Sitwell, Edith. English Women. William Collins.
The last entry is a moving tribute to the recently deceased Virginia Woolf
Literary responses Mary Robinson
The title and publisher convinced Dorothy Wordsworth that MR was cashing in on the fame of her brother 's Lyrical Ballads; she told a friend that he was thinking of changing his own title...
Family and Intimate relationships Anne Ridler
Anne Bradby (later AR ) was still at school when she first met Charles Williams , the poet, Christian apologist, novelist, playwright and essayist, who was a friend of her headmistress, and came to lecture...
Intertextuality and Influence Ruth Rendell
The novel contains particularly sophisticated subplots, including the intense rivalry between Burden's teenaged children, and Elizabeth's and Wexford's parallel fears of growing old. As usual in RR 's work, the novel gives an important role...
Literary responses Amelia Opie
The Critical Review, which had praised AO 's earlier work, thought this novel equally well done, and that the description of the heroine's death could stand comparison with those of Richardson 's Clarissa or...
Health Mary Lamb
One of Mary Lamb 's bouts of madness seems to have been brought on by agitation about the break between Coleridge and theWordsworths .
Moorman, Mary. William Wordsworth: A Biography. Clarendon Press.
2: 195-6, 195n4
Burton, Sarah. A Double Life: A Biography of Charles and Mary Lamb. Viking.
263
Friends, Associates Mary Lamb
ML 's friends (many of them made through Charles) included Eliza Fenwick (whose husband and Charles drank together), Henry Crabb Robinson , and many more canonical members of the Romantic movement. Charles was close to...
Literary responses Mary Lamb
Burton writes: The adoption and appropriation of Mary's ideas and expressions in his own work was a natural activity of Charles 's writing, but compared with the retrospective recognition of Dorothy Wordsworth 's contribution to...

Timeline

15 April 1802: Dorothy Wordsworth recorded in her diary...

Writing climate item

15 April 1802

Dorothy Wordsworth recorded in her diary how she and her brother , out walking, came on a mass of wild daffodils in bloom at the edge of a lake.

3 September 1802: William Wordsworth composed his well-known...

Writing climate item

3 September 1802

William Wordsworth composed his well-known sonnetUpon Westminster Bridge, responding to the power of the city, as well as countryside or wilderness, to arouse transcendent feelings.

From April 1810: The Rev. Joseph Wilkinson's Select Views...

Writing climate item

From April 1810

The Rev. Joseph Wilkinson 's Select Views in Cumberland, Westmorland, and Lancashire appeared in instalments, containing William Wordsworth 's introductory Description of the Scenery of the English Lakes and later text.

10 September 2003: Guardian Unlimited Books named as Site of...

Writing climate item

10 September 2003

Guardian Unlimited Books named as Site of the Week a website entitled Poetry Landmarks of Britain: a map of poetic assocations plotted on an interactive map of Britain, searchable by region or category.

Texts

Wordsworth, Dorothy. George & Sarah Green. Editor Selincourt, Ernest De, Clarendon, 1936.
Wordsworth, Dorothy. Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth. Editor Knight, William Angus, Macmillan, 1897.
Wordsworth, Dorothy. Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth. Editor Selincourt, Ernest De, Macmillan, 1941.
Wordsworth, Dorothy, and William Wordsworth. Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth: The Alfoxden Journal 1798; The Grasmere Journals 1800-1803. Editor Darbishire, Helen, Oxford University Press, 1958.
Wordsworth, Dorothy, and Helen Darbishire. Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth: The Alfoxden Journal 1798; The Grasmere Journals 1800-1803. Editor Moorman, Mary, Oxford University Press, 1971.
Wordsworth, Dorothy. “Preface”. Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, edited by Ernest De Selincourt, Macmillan, 1941, p. 1: v - xix.
Wordsworth, Dorothy. Recollections of a Tour made in Scotland. Editor Shairp, John Campbell, Edmonston and Douglas, 1874.
Wordsworth, Dorothy. The Grasmere Journals. Editor Woof, Pamela, Oxford University Press, 1993.
Wordsworth, William et al. The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth. Editors Selincourt, Ernest De et al., Clarendon, 1993.
Wordsworth, William, and Dorothy Wordsworth. The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth. The Later Years. Editor Selincourt, Ernest De, Clarendon Press, 1939.