Category: Uncategorized

Posted on

Baron — Language and Relationship in Wordsworth’s Writing (1995)

Baron, Michael. Language and Relationship in Wordsworth’s Writing. London and New York: Longman, 1995.

Abstract: “The word ‘community’ occurs fairly seldom in Wordsworth’s poetry, and when it does it usually suggests ‘communion’ among all humankind, rather than a socially defined group of individuals. The community presented in the poems, which the reader is invited to join, is one which shares a language, and it is the community which gives validity to the language. In ‘Emma’s Dell’ the narrator trusts that his imagined community will include other kinds of people ‘shepherds’, not individuated but classed by an economic relation to place bridging a gap between aesthetic and economic inhabitation; and that the community will persist. Wordsworth approaches the idea that meaning is essentially a social phenomenon, that only shared associations give language its strength and veracity. For Wordsworth the primary aim of poetry is communication, and any meditation on subject matter and style inevitably involves imagining a reader. Wordsworth draws strength from communion with Dorothy but also from a sense of public recognition.”

Review: William Galperin, Studies in Romanticism 36:3 (Fall, 1997): 492–94.
 
Copy: Library of Congress.
Posted on

Fadem — Dorothy Wordsworth (1978)

Fadem, Richard. “Dorothy Wordsworth: A View from ‘Tintern Abbey’.” Wordsworth Circle 9.1 (Winter, 1978): 17–32.

“Without William Wordsworth, Dorothy would surely be unknown to us. To say so is merely to confirm her modest sense of herself. She would be the last to claim for herself genuine talents, the first to be astonished by the attention she has received. Certainly, she would be embarrassed by the fervid assertions of those who claim that her journals and letters provide vital insights into William’s poetry and that her own writing – the journals, the ‘Recollections’ of several tours, the many letters, and the few poems – possess literary merits of their own. Although Dorothy was given to embarrassment and self-effacement, in this instance her feelings would be appropriate. Our readings of Wordsworth’s poems have not been materially altered by Dorothy’s few remarks on their genesis and development, nor is her own writing in any sustained way interesting as literature, no matter how beguiling it is for its accounts of the Wordsworth household and surrounding landscape” (p. 17).
Posted on

Wordsworth, Dorothy — Grasmere Journal (2016)

Wordsworth, Dorothy. The Grasmere Journal 1800–1803. London: Folio Society, 2016.

With an introduction by Lucy Newlyn. Illustrated by Georgia Bennett.

“The Grasmere Journal was first published in book form in 1897, edited by William Knight, although substantial extracts had appeared in his The Life of William Wordsworth in 1889. This Folio edition is based on that of the 1941 edition published by Macmillan & Co. Ltd and edited by Ernest de Selincourt, with minor emendations and revisions” (title-page verso).

Review: Sian Cain, Guardian, 25 April 2026 [Web].
Posted on

Price — Dorothy Wordsworth’s Mental Illness (2011)

Price, John. “Dorothy Wordsworth’s Mental Illness.” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 91 (July 1998): 390–93.

“During the early months of 1835 DW had a severe and prolonged attack of abdominal pain and sickness accompanied by considerable emaciation. During this time she may well have consumed brandy as a ‘stimulant’. She appears to have become briefly confused and clouded. She was thereafter able to walk very little without support. On recovery from the acute symptoms, her memory for recent events became permanently grossly impaired. ¶ Over the last twenty years of her life (1835–1855), there seems to have been virtually no indication of deterioration and not much of improvement. Her life during this time, when compared with her premorbid level of functioning, emerges from the record as largely unproductive. Some functions remained unimpaired. She had become inert, apathetic and lacking in initiative. Some emotional reactivity was preserved.”
Posted on

Hammack — Imperfect Notices (May 2018)

Hammack, E. R. “‘Imperfect Notices’: The 1820 Continental Journal of Mary Wordsworth.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 37.1 (May 2028): 91–110.

Abstract: “Through a close reading of Mary Wordsworth’s 1820 Continental travel journal, this essay challenges her peripheral status in studies of the Wordsworth writing circle. It offers a formalist analysis of the text, demonstrating the qualities and aspects of Mary’s writing that contribute to the importance of her journal in relation to the other literary endeavors of the tour. Mary’s writing, with its elliptical style and panoramic descriptions, reveals a sophisticated and imaginatively creative mind, one that was an equal participant in the coterie of the tour’s writers, including Henry Crabb Robinson and Dorothy Wordsworth. This essay seeks to free the journal from its critical relegation to a mere resource for William Wordsworth’s Memorials of a Tour on the Continent, instead approaching the journal on its own terms. The analysis calls for further consideration of Mary’s journals in relation to contexts of travel writing, romantic narrative, and women’s writing.”

Posted on

Wilson — Dorothy Wordsworth and Her Female Contemporaries’ Legacy (2019)

Wilson, Louise Ann. “Dorothy Wordsworth and her Female Contemporaries’ Legacy.” Performance Research 24.2 (2119): 109–19.

Abstract: “In this article I argue that a feminine ‘material’ sublime approach to mountains exists and has for generations but remains under-recognized and on the fringes of mainstream dialogues, which – historically and in the present – are dominated by masculine ‘transcendent’ sublime accounts, encounters and endeavours. The article enables me to explore how in Early Romanticism the concept of the masculine ‘transcendent’ sublime – an intellectual and spiritual experience that transcends physical matter – came to dominate discourses on landscape. I then propose how, in contrast, the feminine ‘material’ sublime is located in and present to the physical landscape, not as a place from which to ‘escape’ or ‘disappear’ but as a place in which to ‘reappear’ – a process I suggest is transformative and therapeutic. To do this, I show how the landscape writing of Dorothy Wordsworth and her female contemporaries represents a feminine ‘material’ sublime ‘mode’ of engaging with landscape that enabled them to see afresh ‘everyday’ objects, people and experiences that were ordinarily overlooked or on the edges of mainstream social and cultural discourses.I explore the way in which the work of these women and their ‘mode’ of engagement are closely allied with my own practice and have informed a model I have developed for creating applied scenography in the form of walking-performances in mountainous and rural landscapes that emplace, re-image and transform ‘missing’, marginal and challenging life-events. Underpinning that model are seven ‘scenographic’ principles, which I demonstrate through an analysis of a number of walking-performance projects. The Gathering / Yr Helfa (2014), which revealed the fertility cycles of the ewes on a hill-farm in Wales, and two projects specific to The Lake District: Warnscale: A Land Mark Walk Reflecting On Infertility and Childlessness (2015-ongoing) aimed at women who are biologically childless-by-circumstance (2015); Dorothy’s Room and Women’s Walks to Remember: ‘With memory I was there.’ (2018), an installation and surrogate-walking project that maps walks women are no longer able to do physically but remember vividly.”
Posted on

Wolf — Shared Recollections (2021)

Wolf, Alexis. “Shared Recollections: Dorothy Wordsworth’s Scottish Tour of 1803.” Studies in Romanticism 60.4 (2021): 401–417.

Abstract: “This essay examines the composition, publication and reception of Dorothy Wordsworth’s Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland, A.D. 1803. Manuscript versions of Recollections are interpreted as sociable texts exchanged by marginal women figures of the Wordsworths’ literary circle; as tools for Romantic cooperative writing, moving between prose and verse; and as later life emblems of agency and mobility. Building on existing research on literary sociability as well as manuscript circulation, this essay considers the permeable nature of Romantic women’s books, resituating them as intrinsic to the development of individual and communal literary identities and bibliographies in the period.”
Posted on

Ashton — I Had a Sister (1937)

Ashton, Helen, and Katharine Davies. I Had a Sister: A Study of Mary Lamb, Dorothy Wordsworth, Caroline Herschel, Cassandra Austen. London: Lovat Dickson Limited, 1937.

See pp. 83–142. With illustrations by William Townsend. The sections on Mary Lamb and Dorothy Wordsworth are by Helen Ashton; the sections on Caroline Herschel and Cassandra Austen are by Katharine Davies.

Copies: Library of Congress [microfilm only] — Wordsworth Trust (Reference 1994.42.142)

Reprint: Folcroft, Pa.: Folcroft Library Editions, 1975. Library of Congress (PR119 .A8 1975).