Dorothy Wordsworth
born Dec. 25, 1771, Cockermouth, Cumberland,
Eng.
died Jan. 25, 1855, Rydal Mount, Westmorland
English prose writer whose Alfoxden Journal
1798 and Grasmere Journals 1800–03 are read
today for the imaginative power of their
description of nature and for the light they
throw on her brother, the Romantic 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
1796–98, she enjoyed with Wordsworth and Samuel
Taylor Coleridge a companionship of “three
persons with one soul.” She went with them to
Germany (1798–99), 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
thenceforth was obliged to lead the life of an
invalid. Her ill health affected her intellect,
and during the last 20 years of her life her
mind was clouded.
The Alfoxden Journal (of which only the
period from January to April 1798 survives) is a
record of William’s friendship with Coleridge
that resulted in their Lyrical Ballads (1798),
with which the Romantic movement began. The
Grasmere Journals contains material on which
William drew for his poetry (notably her
description of daffodils in April 1802, which
inspired his I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud). Her
other surviving journals include accounts of her
trip to Germany in 1798–99 as well as visits to
Scotland (1803) and Switzerland (1820). None of
her writings was published in her lifetime.
