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Gunn — Passion for the Particular (1981)

Gunn, Elizabeth. A Passion for the Particular. Dorothy Wordsworth: A Portrait. London: Victor Gollancz, 1981.

Dust-jacket: “. . . The facts of Dorothy’s life (1771–1855) are well known, but some facets of her character less so. Though she shared the hardships as well as the exaltation of her brother’s early years at Racedown, Alfoxden, Grasmere, and was the mainstay of his family after he married in 1802, hers was never a passive role: she was no mere handmaiden to poets . . . but a full partner in William’s activities and his eventual poetic triumph, and was often the dominant moral force in their daily existence.”

Copy: Library of Congress.

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Hardwick — Seduction and Betrayal (1970)

Hardwick, Elizabeth. Seduction and Betrayal: Women and Literature. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970.

Also New York: Random House, 1974. With an introduction by Joan Didion.

See “Dorothy Wordsworth,” pp. 143–56.

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Woof — Wordsworths and the Daffodils (2002)

Woof, Pamela. The Wordsworths and the Daffodils. Grasmere: The Wordsworth Trust, 2002.

Booklet issued on the 200th anniversary of the publication of “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.” Woof’s essay traces the development of the poem; with a second, botanical essay by Madeline Harley.

Review: E. Charles Nelson, Archives of Natural History 30.2 (2003): 359.

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Wordsworth, Dorothy — Recollections of a Tour (1997)

Wordsworth, Dorothy. Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland. Ed. Carol Kyros Walker. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997.

Abstract: “In the late summer and early autumn of 1803, Dorothy Wordsworth undertook an extraordinary 663-mile journey through the Scottish Lowlands and southwestern Highlands, with her brother William and, for a short time, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. On their return home, she recorded, with warmth, wit and crisp imagery, her recollections of the adventures, sights and unspoiled, romantic landscape of the tour. Her engaging ‘journal’ is now republished in this beautiful volume that provides remarkable black-and-white photographs of the Scottish scenes described. Carol Kyros Walker has captured the essence of these places in a photographic essay that follows each week of Wordsworth’s recollections. Walker also contributes an introduction to locate events of the journey within their historical setting and to explain the significance of this trip for the three participants; a discussion of Dorothy Wordsworth’s skills as a writer; extensive notes to clarify her many allusions; and a map of the itinerary.”

Copy: Library of Congress.

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Worthen — The Gang (2001)

Worthen, John. The Gang: Coleridge, the Hutchinsons and the Wordsworths in 1802. London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.

Abstract: “‘A Night or two after a worse Rogue there came, The head of the Gang, one Wordsworth by name . . .’ — Coleridge, A Soliloquy of the full Moon, April 1802. ¶ Over a dramatic six-month period in 1802, William Wordsworth, S. T. Coleridge, Wordsworth’s sister Dorothy, and the two Hutchinson sisters Sara and Mary formed a close-knit group whose members saw or wrote to one another constantly. Coleridge, whose marriage was collapsing, was in love with Sara, and Wordsworth was about to be married to Mary, who would be moving in beside Dorothy in their Grasmere cottage. Throughout this extraordinary period both poets worked on some of their finest and most familiar poems, Coleridge’s Dejection: An Ode and Wordsworth’s Immortality Ode. In this fascinating book, John Worthen recreates the group’s intertwined lives and the effect they had on one another. ¶ Drawing on the group’s surviving letters, and poems, as well as Dorothy’s diaries, Worthen throws new light on many old problems. He examines the prehistory of the events of 1802, the dynamics of the group between March and July, the summer of 1802, when Wordsworth and Dorothy visited Calais to see his ex-mistress and his daughter Caroline, and the wedding between Wordsworth and Mary in October of that year. In an epilogue he looks forward to the ways in which relationships changed during 1803, concentrating on a single day, 11 January 1803, in the lives of the group.”

Copy: Library of Congress.