Dorothy Wordsworth: Sister and Poet
to the village of Holford glittered like another stream." The repetition of glitter connects hawthorn hedges to the light of hollies and to the road. Heaven and earth mirror and illuminate one another in Dorothy's language.
Obviously, William was not the only gifted writer in the family. It is interesting to conjecture whether, if Dorothy lived in another age or time, she would have been motivated to pursue literary fame or recognition like her brother. Sadly, her life ended in illness and opium addiction.
ADDENDUM: A group of women circled around the ring of Romantic poets that included Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Robert Southey. Kathleen Jones recently published, to favorable review, A Passionate Sisterhood, a group biography of these women. The jacket copy states that the reader will be taken "into the kitchens, sickrooms, and eventually the madwoman's attics of these major Romantic households." It promises to be an enlightening peek into the world that both excited and constrained the talented sister of a talented brother. Having purchased the book months ago, I hope to find the time to read and review it soon. It may be worth investigating on your own, and if you do, I'd love to hear from you!
Other books of interest:
A Paperback edition of her journals: The Grasmere Journals
A Biography: Dorothy Wordsworth
Dorothy's journals in regard to her travels through Scotland: Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland
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Quotes from William's poetry are from:
Wordsworth, William. Selected Poems and Prefaces. Ed. Jack Stillinger. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1965.
Quotes from Dorothy's journals are from:
Wordsworth, Dorothy. Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth. Ed. E. de Selincourt. London: Macmillan, 1959.
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,In his preface to the second edition of his Lyrical Ballads, William Wordsworth wrote that "all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings." Powerful feelings alone do not create "good" poetry. Rather, good poetry stems from the poet's ability, as Wordsworth's own poems attest, to depict and evoke those very feelings as if they overflow from the page itself. His lyrical and eloquent poems capture fleeting essences, such as memory and reminiscence, as he saw them mirrored in the beauty and serenity of nature. In "Tintern Abbey," one of my personal favorites, Wordsworth reflects upon a distant childhood. He pairs the aching loneliness that often accompanies such memories with the sheer pleasure of remembrance. Nature intensifies these seemingly conflicting emotions and melds them into her own majesty: "...For I have learned/To look
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