Description
Book SynopsisDOROTHY WORDSWORTH is well known as the author of the Alfoxden and Grasmere Journals (1798–1803) and as the sister of the poet William Wordsworth. She is widely praised for her nature writing and is often remembered as a woman of great physical vitality. Less well known, however, is that Dorothy became seriously ill in 1829 and was mostly housebound for the last twenty years of her life.
Her personal letters and unpublished journals from this time paint a portrait of a compassionate and creative woman who made her sickroom into a garden for herself and her pet robin and who finally grew to call herself a poet. They also reveal how vital Dorothy was to her brother’s success, and the closeness they shared as siblings. By re-examining her life through the perspective of her illness, this biography allows Dorothy Wordsworth to step out from her brother’s shadow and back into her own life story.
Trade Review'Polly Atkin argues for Dorothy’s place in the writing of illness … A narrowing world, she reminds us, need not lead to a narrowing of the self.' -- Guardian
'A timely reappraisal …told with great sensitivity and … a grounded perspective of Dorothy’s everyday life in the Lakeland landscape.' -- Cumbria Life, Book of the Month, December 2021
'Dorothy Wordsworth’s life is not worth less when, as Atkin reveals through scholarship and poetry, her ‘keen eye’ is ‘turned not just on the world around her, but on the world inside.’ -- Iona Glen
'The Wordsworths provide … a treasure trove for authors, but this unusual book about Dorothy Wordsworth … is all about her illness. I’ve never seen that subject covered before.' -- Hunter Davies, Cumbria Life
'A fresh, often deeply affecting reappraisal … breaks new ground … The restraint and spareness of Atkin’s writing is extremely powerful … almost leap[ing] off the page.' -- European Romantic Review
Table of ContentsList of Abbreviations: Introduction; Many Dorothies; Dorothy and the Creative Household; Five Years of Sickness & Pain; Sickbed Consolations; Lost Fragments Shall Remain; Undiagnosing Dorothy; Dorothy's Symptoms; Coda: Finding Dorothy; A Life in a Timeline; Notes; Bibliography; Acknowledgements; Index
