The Letters of Dorothy Wordsworth A Selection

"I should detest," wrote Dorothy Wordsworth, "the idea of setting myself up as an author." Protesting to Lady Beaumont she explained "I have not the powers which Coleridge thinks I have--I know it." Despite her self-deprecatory words, however, the reader of Dorothy Wordsworth's letters will discover a skill with language and a power of description that rivals even the poetry of her more famous brother. In this selection, Alan G. Hill offers seventy complete letters that together provide a fascinating portrait of the writer and her surroundings. Spontaneous, intimate, and lively, they constitute a life of Dorothy Wordsworth in her own words, following her from youth to the onset of her last tragic illness. In between, we meet a remarkable group of people, for no other observer was so close to Wordsworth, Coleridge, and their circle, shared so completely their feelings and aims, and had such an eye for the landscape that inspired them. To have brought them so vividly before our eyes is surely one of Dorothy Wordsworth's greatest and most enduring achievements.

Alan G. Hill is Professor of English at Royal Holloway College, University of London and is General Editor of The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth in eight volumes, also published by Oxford.