William Wordsworth

DW left Grasmere with her brother William to travel to France to meet with his former lover Annette Vallon (now calling herself Williams) and her daughter, Caroline.

DW 's life was radically changed when her brother William married Mary Hutchinson .

DW , with William and Mary Wordsworth and their family, moved from Dove Cottage to Allan Bank, another rented house in Grasmere.

Though she avoids apology and excessive humility, AY seeks sympathy in this volume by touching on her own poverty and suffering. She perhaps took this technique from the craze for Goethe 's Werther, which...

Elizabeth Isabella Spence , reporting on a visit to Bristol, mentions AY as an example of an obscure woman writer of genius. In 1990 Donna Landry wrote of her complex contradictions under the heading...

Her vindication of unmarried women drawing intellectual and social authority from their relationship with the Church of England brings to mind Mary Astell . She appears to have learned from women writers like Sarah Trimmer

Quite unlike her later books, this one features a solitary heroine who takes a Wordsworth ian delight in nature.