Showing results by author "Dorothy Wordsworth" in All Categories

This is perhaps one of the best-loved of all journals. William Wordsworth's sister, Dorothy, began it in May 1800 and resolved to keep it for a short time. She continued it for nearly three years. In it, she brought the Dove Cottage years to vivid and intimate life. She noted the walks and weather, the friends, country neighbours, and travellers on the roads. She set down accounts of the garden, of Wordsworth's marriage, their concern for Coleridge, and the composition of Wordsworth's poetry.

Begun in 1797, when William was at the height of his poetic powers, The Grasmere and Alfoxden Journals provide invaluable insight into the daily lives of Dorothy and William Wordsworth, William’s friendship with Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the incidents that inspired some of his greatest poems. Richly immersive and intimately domestic, the Journals transport the listener to life in the Lake District 200 years ago as Dorothy describes the Lake District countryside, her garden and neighbours, keeping house, going on walks, and the people she meets along the way

Sixty-nine poems by six of the most admired women Romantic writers—English, Scottish, Irish, and American: Dorothy Wordsworth (William Wordsworth’s sister), Joanna Baillie, Eliza Townsend, Mary Tighe, Sara Coleridge (Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s daughter), and Caroline Bowles Southey. Each in her own way, they all broke with the poetic conventions of the past, writing in ordinary language about ordinary people, and approaching the traditional subjects of poetry with fresh eyes. Comedy and tragedy, love and hatred, life and death, oppression and freedom—they’re all here.