Nicholson, Norman. The Lakers: The First Tourists. London: Robert Hale, 1955.
See Chap. 10, “The Wordsworths,” pp. 159–81.
Robertson — Wordsworthshire (1911)
Robertson, Eric. Wordsworthshire: An Introduction to a Poet’s Country. London: Chatto & Windus, 1911.
Frequent references to Dorothy Wordsworth throughout, but see especially Chap. xviii, “Dorothy Wordsworth’s Prose Poems.” “Dorothy Wordsworth somehow, from among modern writing women, has crept closest to our country’s heart” (p. 249).
Rawnsley — Rambler’s Note-book (1902)
Rawnsley, H. D. A Rambler’s Note-book at the English Lakes. Glasgow: MacLehose, 1902.
Several references to Dorothy Wordsworth.
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).
Winter — Undersong (2021)
Winter, Kathleen. Undersong: A Novel. Canada: Knopf, 2021.
Abstract: “When young James Dixon, a local jack-of-all-trades recently returned from the Battle of Waterloo, meets Dorothy Wordsworth, he quickly realizes he’s never met another woman anything like her. In her early thirties, Dorothy has already lived a wildly unconventional life. And as her famous brother William Wordsworth’s confidante and creative collaborator—considered by some in their circle to be the secret to his success as a poet—she has carved a seemingly idyllic existence for herself, alongside William and his wife, in England’s Lake District. ¶ One day, Dixon is approached by William to do some handiwork around the Wordsworth estate. Soon he takes on more and more chores—and quickly understands that his real, unspoken responsibility is to keep an eye on Dorothy, who is growing frail and melancholic. The unlikely pair of misfits form a sympathetic bond despite the troubling chasm in social class between them, and soon Dixon is the quiet witness to everyday life in Dorothy’s family and glittering social circle, which includes literary legends Samuel Coleridge, Thomas de Quincy, William Blake, and Charles and Mary Lamb. ¶ Through the fictional James Dixon—a gentle but troubled soul, more attuned to the wonders of the garden he faithfully tends than to vexing worldly matters—we step inside the Wordsworth family, witnessing their dramatic emotional and artistic struggles, hidden traumas, private betrayals and triumphs. At the same time, Winter slowly weaves a darker, complex ‘undersong’ through the novel, one as earthy and elemental as flower and tree, gradually revealing the pattern of Dorothy’s rich, hidden life—that of a woman determined, against all odds, to exist on her own terms. But the unsettling effects of Dorothy’s tragically repressed brilliance take their toll, and when at last her true voice sings out, it is so searing and bright that Dixon must make an impossible choice.”
For an account by Winter of her experiences in writing the novel, see this essay by her (Web), and an interview by Trevor Corkum (Web). For a description of a talk by Winter, see Hannah Britton, “An Afternoon with Dorothy Wordsworth,” 6 August 2019 (Web).
Reviews: Janet Somerville, “Dorothy Wordsworth Finally Gets Her Poetic Due in Kathleen Winter’s New Novel ‘Undersong,’” Toronto Star, 13 August 2021 [Web]. Doreen Yakabuski, 29 August 2021 [Web]. — Brett Josef Grubisic, “Poetry She Wrote,” Literary Review of Canada, September 2021 [Web], Marie Wadden, “Winter Captures Kindred Spirit,” Newfoundland Quarterly, January 2022 [Web].
Orestano — Lady Gardeners (2023)
Orestano, Francesca, and Michael Vickers, eds. Lady Gardeners: Seeds, Roots, Propagation, from England to the Wider World. Summertown, Oxford: Archaeopress, 2023.
See chap. 2, Anna Rudelli, “Dorothy Wordsworth: A Romantic Garden in the Lake District,” pp. 16–25.
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.
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.
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.”
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.”
Dorothy Wordsworth 