Tag: Rydal Mount

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Ketcham — Dorothy Wordsworth’s Journals (1978)

Ketcham, Carl H. “Dorothy Wordsworth’s Journals, 1824–1835.” Wordsworth Circle 9.1 (Winter, 1978): 3–16.

“. . . Dorothy Wordsworth [in 1824] began keeping a daily record of her life at Rydal Mount and on her extended visits away from home – a record which lasted, with occasional interruptions, until her mental collapse in 1835. These journals, mostly unpublished, have attracted little attention: they cover a period when Wordsworth’s craftsmanship was uneventfully self-assured; they are scrawled and rather difficult to read; and they have been given a bad press by de Selincourt, who disparaged them as terse and uninformative. It is true that they are often, in effect, notes toward a journal – reminders of daily events which were often enough routine, and whose details Dorothy felt no need to set down in full. But they provide a faithful account of Dorothy’s later life in the poet’s household, with glimpses of William, his family and friends; they show that Dorothy, well into her middle years, vas still a tireless, active, sensitive observer, constantly in excited quest of new experiences; and finally, like the Liebestod which rounds Keats’s letters with a tragic period, they close the history of Dorothy’s long years of devotion with a decrescendo of sickness and pain, ending with the sudden darkening of her mind” (p. 3).

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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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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].
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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.

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Death of Wordsworth’s Sister (16 February 1855)

“Death of Wordsworth’s Sister.” Elgin Courant and Morayshire Courier, 16 February 1855, p. 4.

Obituary. “The living links that unite us to poets of the first half of the present century are fast disappearing from among us. Last week added another of the many that have gone. Dorothy Wordsworth, the only sister of William Wordsworth, died at Rydal Mount in Westmoreland, on the 25th of January, in her eighty-fourth year.”