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Jerram — Dorothy Wordsworth’s Illness (2021)

Jerram, Tim. “Dorothy Wordsworth’s Illness—Psychiatry in Literature.” British Journal of Psychiatry 218.2 (February 2021): 87.

“. . . her condition was fully described both by her family and by literary visitors, and from her own Journals and the many descriptions of her by William and their literary acquaintances we know much about her premorbid state. From these we can ascribe many of her health problems to thyroid disease.”

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Hough — Dorothy Wordsworth (1955)

Hough, Graham. “Dorothy Wordsworth: Sharer in Genius.” Manchester Guardian, 25 January 1955, p. 6.

“To be the inspiration of a great poet is one of the surest passports to immortality for a woman. But it is generally a necessary condition for this that she shall not be his sister. It is the distinction of Dorothy Wordsworth to have been celebrated not in her lover’s verse but in her brother’s; and to have been not a distant ideal but an ever-present companion in the process of creation. ¶ The centenary of her death falls to-day, and it is hard to avoid speculation on the difference to the course of English poetry made by that one quiet life.”

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Beattie-Smith — Dorothy Wordsworth’s Journals of Scotland (2021)

Beattie-Smith, Gillian. “Dorothy Wordsworth’s Journals of Scotland: The Creation of the Romantic Author (Dzienniki szkockie Dorothy Wordsworth: Kreacja autorki romantycznej).” Postscriptum Polonistyczne 27.1 (2021); 51–67.

Abstract: “The increase in popularity of the Home Tour in the 19th century and the publication of many journals, diaries, and guides of tours of Scotland by, such as, Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, led to the perception of Scotland as a literary tour destination. The tour of Scotland invariably resulted in a journal in which identities such as writer, traveller, observer, were created. The text became a location for the pursuit of a sense of place and identity. For women in particular, the text offered opportunities to be accepted as a writer and commentator. Dorothy Wordsworth made two journeys to Scotland: the first, in 1803, with William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and the second, in 1822 with Joanna Hutchinson, the sister of Mary, her brother’s wife. This paper considers Dorothy’s identity constructed in those Scottish journals. Discussions of Dorothy Wordsworth have tended to consider her identity through familial relationship, and those of her writing by what is lacking in her work. Indeed, her work and her writing are frequently subsumed into the plural of ‘the Wordsworths’. This paper considers the creation of individual self in her work, and discusses the social and spatial construction of identity in Dorothy’s discourse in her journals about Scotland.”

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Armour — Coleridge the Talker (1940)

Armour, Richard W., and Raymond F. Howes. Coleridge the Talker: A Series of Contemporary Descriptions and Comments. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1940.

See “Dorothy Wordsworth: 1771–1855,” pp. 373–76.

“Coleridge has described the sympathetic union of himself and William and Dorothy Wordsworth as that of ‘three persons and one soul.’ Not the least person in that union was Dorothy, who supplied Coleridge with the companionship and understanding of which his wife was incapable. In their walks in the Quantocks she guided and sharpened his observation of nature, and was delighted with his responsiveness. On their first meeting, which occurred at Racedown in the spring of 1797, they were at once drawn to each other” (p. 373).

Copy: Library of Congress.

Digital copy: Google Books.

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Adcock — Grasmere Journals (2014)

Adcock, Fleur. “The Grasmere Journals: Dorothy Wordsworth.” London Library Magazine, no. 24 (Summer, 2014): 13.

“My visits [to the Lake District] these days are not very frequent, but Dorothy’s journal is established in my head: a refuge for whenever I may feel I’m in the wrong place.”

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Kasper  — Dorothy Wordsworth, Religion, and the Rydal Journals (2023)

Kasper, Emily Stephens. “Dorothy Wordsworth, Religion, and the Rydal Journals.” M.A. thesis, Brigham Young University, 2023.

Abstract: “Dorothy Wordsworth’s religious practices continued to evolve throughout her life. She was baptized Anglican, but after her mother’s death she resided with her mother’s cousin, where she practiced Unitarianism. When she later moved in with her uncle, she embraced evangelical Anglicanism. Records of her religious beliefs in her twenties are scarce, as after moving to Racedown with her brother William in 1795 and throughout her years living in Alfoxden, she rarely wrote of her involvement with organized religion. Only in the 1810s while at Grasmere did Dorothy Wordsworth begin to record a gradual return to church attendance. Concerning her religious practices in the years following this return, due to a relative lack of information concerning Dorothy Wordsworth’s spirituality during this period, scholars have concluded that her Anglicanism was unremarkable: groundbreaking biographer Ernest De Sélincourt called her faith a ‘simple orthodox piety’ (267) while Robert Gittings and Jo Manton labeled it ‘the conventional piety of her middle age’ (168). Often, scholars have also concluded that Dorothy Wordsworth’s Anglicanism was relatively orthodox, due to the outspoken High Churchmanship of her brothers William and Christopher. As this thesis demonstrates, however, Dorothy Wordsworth’s previously unpublished Rydal Journals complicate such conclusions. These journals offer a wealth of evidence concerning her religious practices and beliefs between 1825–35, including extensive lists of scripture references, records of her church attendance, logs of her religious reading, assessments of sermons, and expressions of her personal faith. The various findings suggest that Dorothy’s faith was more complex than previously understood, as it was passionate, informed, and, in ways, surprisingly evangelical.”

Available on the Web.