Tag: Library of Congress

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Wilson — Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth (2008)

Wilson, Frances. The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth: A Life. London: Faber and Faber, 2008.

Abstract on jacket (American edition): “Described by the writer and opium addict Thomas De Quincey as ‘the very wildest . . . person I have ever known,’ Dorothy Wordsworth was neither the self-effacing spinster nor the sacrificial saint of common telling. A brilliant stylist in her own right, Dorothy was at the center of the Romantic movement of the early nineteenth century. She was her brother William Wordsworth’s inspiration, aide, and most valued reader, and a friend to Coleridge; both borrowed from her observations of the world for their own poems. ¶ In order to remain at her brother’s side, Dorothy sacrificed both marriage and comfort, jealously guarding their close-knit domesticity – one marked by a startling freedom from social convention. In the famed Grasmere Journals, Dorothy kept a record of this idyllic life together. The tale that unfolds through her brief, electric entries reveals an intense bond between brother and sister, culminating in Dorothy’s dramatic collapse on the day of William’s wedding to their childhood friend Mary Hutchinson. Dorothy lived out the rest of her years with her brother and Mary. The woman who strode the hills in all hours and all weathers would eventually retreat into the house for the last three decades of her life. ¶ In this biography, Frances Wilson reveals Dorothy in all her complexity. From the coiled tension of Dorothy’s journals, she unleashes the rich emotional life of a woman determined to live on her own terms, and honors her impact on the key figures of Romanticism.”

Contents: Introduction. Crossing the Threshold. — 1. For Richer or Poorer: Longing — 2. To Have and to Hold: Home — 3. In Sickness and in Health: Headaches — 4. To Forsake All Others: Incest — 5. To Honour and Obey: Nature — 6. For Better for Worse: Honeymoon — 7. Until Death Do Us Part — Note on the Publication History of the Grasmere Journal.

Reviews: Mark Bostridge, Independent, 9 March 2008. —Dwight Garner, “A Brother’s Keeper: The Other Wordsworth,” New York Times, 24 February 2009. [Web] — Marjorie Kehe, Christian Science Monitor, 16 April 2009, p. 17.
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Jarvis — Romanic Writing and Pedestrian Travel (1997)

Jarvis, Robin. Romantic Writing and Pedestrian Travel. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997.

“Romantic Writing and Pedestrian Travel is an exploration of the relationship between walking and writing. Robin Jarvis here reconstructs the scene of walking, both in Britain and on the Continent, in the 1790s, and analyses the mentality and motives of the early pedestrian traveller. He then discusses the impact of this cultural revolution on the creativity of major Romantic writers, focusing especially on William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Coleridge, Clare, Keats, Hazlitt and Hunt. In readings which engage current debates around literature and travel, landscape aesthetics, ecocriticism, the poetics of gender, and the materiality of Romantic discourse, Jarvis demonstrates how walking became not only a powerful means of self-enfranchisement but also the focus of restless textual energies.”

Copy: Library of Congress.

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Kellaway — Virago Book of Women Gardeners (2016)

Kellaway, Deborah, ed. The Virago Book of Women Gardeners. London: Virago Press, 2016.

“From diggers and weeders, to artists and colourists, writers and dreamers to trend-setters, plantswomen to landscape designers, women have contributed to the world of gardening and gardens. Here Deborah Kellaway, author of The Making of an English Country Garden and Favourite Flowers, has collected extracts from the 18th century to the present day, to create a book that is replete with anecdotes and good-humoured advice. Colette, Margery Fish, Germaine Greer, Eleanor Sinclair Rohde, Vita Sackville-West, Rosemary Verey, Edith Wharton and Dorothy Wordsworth are some of the writers represented in this book.”

Copy: Library of Congress.

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Grinnell — Age of Hypochondria (2010)

Grinnell, George C. The Age of Hypochondria: Interpreting Romantic Health and Illness. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

Advertisement: “Examining the ways in which hypochondria forms both a malady and a metaphor for a range of British Romantic writers, Grinnell contends that this is not one illness amongst many, but a disorder of the very ability to distinguish between illness and health, a malady of interpretation that mediates a broad spectrum of pressing cultural questions.”

See index.

Copy: Library of Congress.