Dorothy Wordsworth - The Grasmere and Alfoxden Journals

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Pamela Woof 2002

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The Grasmere Journals first published in this edition 1991
The Grasmere and Alfoxden Journals first published
as an Oxford Worlds Classic paperback 2002

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OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS

DOROTHY WORDSWORTH

Edited with an Introduction and Notes by
PAMELA WOOF

OXFORD WORLDS CLASSICS

THE GRASMERE AND ALFOXDEN JOURNALS

DOROTHY WORDSWORTH was born on Christmas Day 1771 at Cockermouth on the edge of the Lake District, the third of five children. Her father was law-agent to Sir James Lowther. When she was 6 her mother died and a cousin of her mother brought her up in Halifax, Yorkshire. Here she had a kindly non-conformist home until, at 15, she went to her grandparents in Penrith. Her father had died when she was 12. In Penrith she met her brothers again, and also met the Hutchinson orphans. From 17 to 22, she lived with Uncle William Cooksons family at Forncett Rectory, Norfolk, leaving in 1794 to give support to her out-of-favour brother, the poet William Wordsworth (b. 1770). With him she met Raisley Calvert in Keswick and was included in Calverts bequest to her brother. Her life thereafter was with Wordsworth, first at Racedown, Dorset, 17957, then, having met Coleridge, at Alfoxden, Somerset, 17978. She wrote her brief Alfoxden Journal, and was integral to the talking and observing that led to Lyrical Ballads, 1798. A winter in Germany with Wordsworth followed, and from Christmas 1799, Grasmere, the Lake District, became home. Her Grasmere Journal 18003 vividly depicts the valley, their daily life, and Dorothys feelings on Wordsworths marriage to Mary Hutchinson in 1802. No publication was ever envisaged. Pedestrian tours, excursions, traveland late sporadic privatejournals, long visits south, and the final move to nearby Rydal in 1813 punctuated the years of busy family life. Mental illness, possibly originating in thiamin deficiency, was almost constant from 1835. Dorothy received loving care, outlived Wordsworth, and died at Rydal Mount in 1855. Interest in both Journals and in Dorothys distinctive imagination has grown steadily since the first edition of 1897.

PAMELA WOOF now lectures part-time in Literature at the Centre for Lifelong Learning at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Since her 1991 edition of Dorothy Wordsworths Grasmere Journals, reprinted with supplementary material here, she has published on Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, Charles and Mary Lamb, and Mary Shelley.

People have been very kind when I have asked them specific questions, and I would like to thank particularly: Susan Dench of the Cumbria Record Office, Carlisle, Jim Grisenthwaite of the Kendal Office, Naomi Evetts of the Liverpool Office, Malcolm Thomas of the Library of Friends House, Mrs Needham, the Old Manor House, Helmsley John Murdoch of the Victoria and Albert Museum, and Peter West of Ponteland, Northumberland. Jeff Cowton at the Wordsworth Library, Grasmere, has been entirely helpful in my frequent and awkward need to have the manuscripts of the Journals out of the Museum where they are exhibited, and in the Library. To George Kirkby Head Guide of Dove Cottage, I am grateful for those conversations that move about the house and garden with such love and knowledge of the places that I have invariably come away richer, and closer to the Wordsworths in their time there.

I am grateful to my fellow Trustees of the Wordsworth Trust for allowing me access to the manuscripts and for permission to publish.

My debt to Sally Woodhead at Grasmere is immense: she has coped promptly, often, and accurately with my handwriting, voice, and a word processor.

I have been encouraged by Stephen Gill and by Jonathan Wordsworth. Indeed the whole project began with Jonathan Wordsworths suggestion that I prepare a commentary on the Grasmere Journals; this grew into an edition, and he has encouraged me in the larger project. Kim Scott-Walwyn and Frances Whistler of the Oxford University Press have been helpful in suggestions, patient with problems, and enthusiastic for Dorothy Wordsworth.

To Robert Woof I am of course most indebted. Marriage to a scholar of such wide and deep learning in so many aspects of the Romantic period has, I hope, not failed to confer on me something of his scholarship. He has responded to all my questions, looked at the manuscripts with me when I have not agreed with the readings of previous editors, suggested directions to me, and prevented me from many a fall into error.