Tag: Grasmere

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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.

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Stone — Literary Couplings (2006)

Stone, Marjorie, and Judith Thompson, eds. Literary Couplings: Writing Couples, Collaborators, and the Construction of Authorship. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006.

See Anne D. Wallace, “Home at Grasmere Again: Revising the Family in Dove Cottage,” pp. 100–23.

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Dorothy Wordsworth’s Lake District (2023)

A scholarly website (published in December 2023) edited by Michael Levy, Nicholas Mason, and Paul Westover.

“Dorothy Wordsworth is one of the most distinctive voices of Romantic-era literature: the author of extraordinary journals, poems, narratives, letters, and natural descriptions. This edition celebrates her work as a literary guide to the English Lake District. It offers access to works from across her career, all newly edited from manuscripts, extensively annotated, and situated within their original material formats and circumstances of composition. While some selections are general favorites, others are less well-known, and a few (selections from the Rydal Journals) have never been published before.”
Contents: Introduction; first notebook of the Grasmere Journal (1800); “Excursion on the Banks of the Ullswater” (1805); “A Narrative Concerning George & Sarah Green” (1808); “Excursion up Scawfell Pike” (1818); “Rydal Journals (1824–25, 1834–5).
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Easley — To Dorothy Wordsworth (2002)

Easley, Alexis. “To Dorothy Wordsworth.” Canadian Woman Studies 22.2 (Fall, 2002–Winter 2003): 147.

“It wasn’t until last summer, when I finally walked your path, trudging through cow gate and muddy field, that I was able to know what led you to walk and to write: it was a way of defeating stillness.”

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Kappes — Fashioning a Voice of Her Own (2009)

Kappes, Gabrielle A. F. “Fashioning a Voice of Her Own: The Poetics of Place in Dorothy Wordsworth’s Poetry, Narratives, and Travel Writing.” Honors thesis, Wheaton College, 6 May 2009.

Contents: Introduction — Chapter 1. Rooting Poetic Voice in Landscape: Dorothy Wordsworth’s Poetry — Chapter 2. The “Inner Histories” of Grasmere: Community as Archive in Dorothy Wordsworth’s Narrative of George and Sarah Green — Chapter 3. Mapping Foreign Lands: Dorothy Wordsworth’s Travel Writing as the Creative Process — Coda.

Copy: Web.

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Wordsworth, Dorothy — Grasmere Journals (1991)

Wordsworth, Dorothy. The Grasmere Journals. Ed. Pamela Woof. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Publisher’s description: “This is perhaps one of the best-loved journals in English literature. Dorothy Wordsworth began it in 1800 to give her poet-brother pleasure, and for three years she noted walks and weather, friends, and neighbors on the roads of Grasmere. The journals tell of Wordsworth’s marriage, the Wordworths’ concern for Coleridge, and of the composition of poetry. For this edition, the original manuscripts have been freshly edited, yielding new readings of previously misread or undeciphered words, and restoring Dorothy Wordsworth’s hasty punctuation. Woof supplies a rich commentary, illuminating every aspect of this marvellous personal record.”

Reviews: Douglas Hewitt, Notes and Queries 39.3 (1992): 400; Nicola Trott, Wordsworth Circle 23.4 (1992): 213–14.

Copy: Library of Congress.

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Newlyn — Vital Stream (2019)

Newlyn, Lucy. Vital Stream. Manchester: Carcanet Press, 2019.

Abstract: “A work of historical fiction, an experiment in life writing and a verse drama designed to be read aloud. Vital Stream takes the form of a long sonnet sequence, revisiting six extraordinary months in 1802 – a threshold year for William and Dorothy Wordsworth. Parted when they were very young, the siblings had eventually set up home together in the Lake District, where they were to remain for the rest of their lives. After two years in Grasmere, William became engaged to Mary Hutchinson. There followed an intense period of re-adjustment for all three, and for his former lover Annette Vallon, who had borne him a daughter he had never met. During 1802 the Wordsworth siblings wrote some of their most beautiful work; these were their last months of living alone, and their writing has an elegiac quality. Their journey to see Annette Vallon and meet William’s daughter for the first time took them through London to Calais during the brief Peace of Amiens, involving a careful dissociation from his past. Other complications coloured their lives, to do with Coleridge and his failing marriage. Lucy Newlyn draws all this material into the vital stream of her sequence.”

With a Foreword by Richard Holmes.

Paperback. Published in association with the Wordsworth Trust.

Copy: Library of Congress.

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Cavendish — Death of Dorothy Wordsworth (2005)

Cavendish, Richard. “Death of Dorothy Wordsworth: January 25th, 1855.” History Today 55.1 (January 2005): 55.

“Dorothy Wordsworth lies buried in one of the most beautiful churchyards in England, at Grasmere in the Lake District, with her brother William, his wife Mary, and other members of the family. She is remembered for her delightful diaries, which were not published until years after her death.”

Available on the Web.
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Gittings — Dorothy Wordsworth (1985)

Gittings, Robert, and Jo Manton. Dorothy Wordsworth. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985.

“The last scholarly biography of Dorothy Wordsworth, written by Ernest de Selincourt, appeared over fifty years ago. Despite the great merits of this work, a new Life must be needed to take into account much that has emerged in the past five decades, and, in particular, more recent editing and scholarship” (p. vii).

Contents: List of plates — 1. “Dear Aunt” — 2. “Poor Dolly” — 3. “The Oeconomy of Charity” — 4. “The character and virtues of my Brother” — 5. “The First Home” — 6. “Coleridge’s Society” — 7. “Lyrical Ballads”— 8. “Wild, sequestered valley” — 9. “Plenty of Business” — 10. “Either joy or sorrow” — 11. “My tears will flow” — 12. “I shall always date Grasmere” — 13. “Those innocent children” — 14. “The Ambleside Gentry” — 15. “Dear Antelope” — 16. “We all want Miss W.” — 17. “This quiet room” — 18. “Oftener merry than sad” — Appendix One — Appendix Two — Notes — Bibliography — Index.

Reviews: Joyce Johnson, Washington Post, Book World, 1 September 1985, p. 5; Leon Waldoff, Modern Language Review 83.1 (1988): 157.

Copy: Library of Congress.

Digital copy: Internet Archive.