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Kappes — The Picturesque and Its Decay (2020)

Kappes, Gabrielle. “The Picturesque and Its Decay: The Travel Writing and Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Mary Shelley.” Ph.D. thesis, City University of New York, 2020.

“This project puts forth the argument that when the late eighteenth century’s taste for nature and picturesque tourism had peaked, writers following in the picturesque tradition grappled with the limitations and confines of these aesthetic categories. In the chapters that follow, I present three authors, Dorothy Wordsworth, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Mary Shelley, who are all dissatisfied with the conventions of the picturesque.”

Available on the Web.
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Steger — Paths to Identity (2009)

Steger, Sara. “Paths to Identity: Dorothy and William Wordsworth and the Writing of Self in Nature.” Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies 5.1 (Spring, 2009). [Web]

“Her sense of self is different than William’s but it should not be considered less valid because of this difference. ‘A Winter’s Ramble’ stands as one example of Dorothy’s poetic aptitude. Like the rest of her poems, it should be read as a contribution to the body of discourse that shaped romantic ideals by testing their limitations and challenging their constructions.”
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Elzey — Differences (2002)

Elzey, Susan Dean. “The Differences between Dorothy Wordsworth’s Journals and William Wordsworth’s Poetry: Applying the Principles of ‘Preface.’” M.A. thesis, Longwood College, May 2002.

Abstract: “The difference between the accounts of Dorothy Wordsworth and William Wordsworth of the events they experience together is studied. At times it almost seems like William contradicts himself in his dictums. However, that assumption is not the case. He takes from Dorothy’s journals a memory, an idea, a description and uses it as the foundation of deeper and more personal poetic revelations than Dorothy ever did. Together, through their writings, the brother and sister illustrate the basic definition of what it is to be a poet. Dorothy was not a poet, William was.”

Contents: Introduction — Chap. 1, “A Departure from ‘Poetic Diction’” — Chap. 2, “Emotions Recollected in Tranquility” — Chap. 3, “Colouring of the Imagination” — Chap. 4, “Spontaneous Overflow of Feelings” — Conclusion — Works Cited.

Available on the Web.
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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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Dennis — Dorothy Wordsworth (1889)

Dennis, John. “Dorothy Wordsworth.” Leisure Hour, December 1889, pp. 121–25.

“The name of Dorothy Wordsworth is inseparably associated with that of her brother. What he owed to her self-denying affection, to her rare intellect, and to her profound love of Nature, the poet has acknowledged in words as familiar as they are beautiful. This ‘beloved sister,’ at the most critical period of Wordsworth’s early manhood, came to him with the ‘healing power’ which his noble verse has given so largely to others. . . . Her influence was abiding. She had herself a poet’s soul without his faculty of singing; and to her inspiring sympathy, expended without a thought of self, we are indebted for some of her brother’s finest poems” (p. 121).

Available on the Web.

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Smith — Meteorological Time (2018)

Smith, Amanda Ricks. “Meteorological Time in Dorothy Wordsworth’s Rydal Journal,” M.A. thesis, Brigham Young University, 2018.

Abstract: “This thesis deals with Dorothy Wordsworth’s Rydal Journal, a journal written between 1824 and 1835, when Dorothy Wordsworth was between ages 53 and 64. . . . I will begin by offering a short history of timekeeping before and during the Wordsworths’ lifetimes, focusing particularly on the degree to which tracking and standardizing minutes and hours was becoming commonplace in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. From there, I will show how, in contrast to this trend toward mechanical timekeeping, Dorothy processed time primarily through natural and climatological cycles and events during the Rydal Journal years. Dorothy’s apparent rejection of clock time seems to be related to her reliance on nature, for weather time was much more lyrical than mechanical time.”

Available on Web.

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Oakley — Evaluation of the Writings of Dorothy Wordsworth (1964)

Oakley, Sandra Sue. “An Evaluation of the Writings of Dorothy Wordsworth.” M.S. thesis, Eastern Illinois University, 1964.

“William Wordsworth was not a self-made poet, drawing all his literary genius from his own imagination and sensory resources. Biographers and critics have agreed that his sister, Dorothy, played a major role in his poetic achievements. The success of this great literary figure tells the story of a younger sister who consecrated her entire life to the greatest good of her brother, sacrificing for herself everything outside him and his existence.”

Available on the Web.