Dorothy Wordsworth and Hartley Coleridge The Poetics of Relationship

This book provides a reassessment of the writings of Hartley Coleridge and Dorothy Wordsworth and presents them in a new poetics of relationship, re-evaluating their relationships with William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge to restore a more accurate understanding of Hartley and Dorothy as independent and original writers.

NICOLA HEALEY obtained her PhD from the University of St Andrews, UK.

"In this very fine book, Nicola Healey raises and resolves a number of issues that will be of great interest to students of Hartley Coleridge and Dorothy Wordsworth, and to Romantic scholars more generally. The close readings, which are consistently excellent, take issue with a number of critics, from Derwent Coleridge and Thomas De Quincey through to twentieth- and twenty-first-century commentators. Healey thoroughly understands the various factors that limited these critics' perceptions at the times they were writing, and she anatomises the wrongness of some literary-critical habits that have gone on for too long. This book builds beautifully on the work of other scholars, and many ideas are handled genially and skilfully. Healey maintains cohesion with the growing multiplicity of the insights throughout the book, providing a vital new perspective on collaboration – including all the tensions this entails. Arguably, however, the main achievement of this book is in its sensitivity to Hartley's and Dorothy's finest writings." - Andrew Keanie, Lecturer in English, University of Ulster, UK