It is not just nature, however, that Dorothy captures in her journal. The most famous example is his ‘Daffodils’ poem where the “dancing”, “laughing company” of daffodils in the poem echo Dorothy’s journal entry for 15 April 1802 – two years before William wrote his poem: “… they tossed & reeled & danced & seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the Lake”. He found her descriptions invaluable and several of his poems can be traced back to Dorothy’s journal. The journal has William as an intended reader: she begins writing it partly “to give William pleasure”. William pays tribute to Dorothy in several poems, writing in ‘The Sparrow’s Nest’ (where he calls her ‘Emmeline’): “She gave me eyes, she gave me ears”. The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge comments: “her eye watchful in minutest observation of nature – and her taste a perfect electrometer – it bends, protrudes, and draws in, at subtlest beauties and most recondite faults”. By contrast, here is a single tree: “it was yielding to the gusty wind with all its tender twigs, the sun shone upon it & it glanced in the wind like a flying sunshiny shower – it was a tree in shape with stem & branches but it was like a Spirit of water –” (24 November 1801).ĭorothy’s sensitivity to nature is recognised by those around her. The colours of the large island exquisitely beautiful & the trees still fresh & green were magnified by the mists” (19 October 1800). Here is one of many descriptions of Rydal Water: “Rydale was very very beautiful the surface of the water quite still like a dim mirror. Dorothy observes the Lake District landscape in all seasons, all weathers and at all times of day and night and provides us with varied descriptions.
Dorothy wordsworth full#
The journal chronicles the Wordsworths’ lives at Dove Cottage, but is also full of vivid descriptions of people and places. Image © The Wordsworth Trustĭorothy keeps her Grasmere Journal between May 1800 and January 1803. The only image of Dorothy as a young woman.
It is from this period that her greatest writing dates. It is only when Dorothy moves into Dove Cottage with her brother William in December 1799 age 28 that she is able to regain a sense of ‘home’. Her early childhood was spent with her four brothers, but, with the death of her mother when she was just seven, Dorothy left the family home for a succession of relatives: an aunt in Halifax, grandparents in Penrith, an uncle in Norfolk. The spectacular Lake District landscape Catherine Kay from the lovely team at The Wordsworth Trust tells us about Dorothy Wordsworth and her wonderful journals of life in the Lake District.ĭorothy Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth on Christmas Day 1771.
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