WORDSWORTH, DOROTHY

born Dec. 25, 1771, Cockermouth, Cumberland, Eng. died Jan. 25, 1855, Rydal Mount, Westmorland English prose writer whose Alfoxden Journal 1798 and Grasmere Journals 180003 are read today for the imaginative power of their description of nature, their perfection of style, and their revelation of a personality of unusual quality. The journals are also important for the light they throw on her brother, the Romanic poet William Wordsworth. Their mother's death in 1778 separated Dorothy from her brothers, and from 1783 they were without a family home. The sympathy between William and Dorothy was strong; she understood him as no one else could and provided the quickening influence he needed. When in 1795 he was lent a house in Dorset, she made a home for him there. At Alfoxden, Somerset, in 179698, she enjoyed with Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge a companionship of three persons with one soul. She went with them to Germany (179899), and in December 1799 she and William settled for the first time in a home of their own, Dove Cottage, Grasmere, in the Lake District, remaining there after his marriage (1802) and moving with the family to Rydal Mount in 1813. In 1829 she was dangerously ill and henceforward was obliged to lead the life of an invalid. Her ill-health apparently affected her intellect, and during the last 20 years of her life her mind was clouded. The descriptions in her Journals gave inspiration to Coleridge and Wordsworth, but she had no thought of professional authorship, writing only to please William. Her prose is spontaneous, transparent, and completely natural. As a record of her brother's life and the dates and circumstances of writing of almost all his poems in the years of his greatest poetic achievement, the Grasmere Journals is invaluable. The Alfoxden Journal is a record of William's friendship with Coleridge that resulted in their Lyrical Ballads (1798), with which the Romantic movement began; and the Grasmere Journals provides a picture of early 19th-century cottage life in a remote part of England. None of her writings was published in her lifetime. The fullest edition of the Journals, with shorter descriptive pieces, is that by Ernest de Selincourt (1941). Helen Derbishire's edition of The Alfoxden and Grasmere Journals, and of poems by Wordsworth mentioned in them (1958), has an excellent introduction. Additional reading Robert Gittings and Jo Manton, Dorothy Wordsworth (1985); Susan M. Levin, Dorothy Wordsworth & Romanticism (1987).