21 Facts About Dorothy Wordsworth

Dorothy Wordsworth was an English author, poet, and diarist.

Dorothy Wordsworth was the sister of the Romantic poet William Wordsworth, and the two were close all their adult lives.

Dorothy Wordsworth had no ambitions to be a public author, yet she left behind numerous letters, diary entries, topographical descriptions, poems, and other writings.

Dorothy Wordsworth was the sister of English Romantic poet William Wordsworth and the third of five children born to Ann Cookson and John Wordsworth.

In 1787, Dorothy Wordsworth moved to her grandparents' house in Penrith, re-establishing contact with her siblings after a nine-year separation.

Dorothy Wordsworth moved to Forncett parish in Norfolk in 1788 with her recently wedded uncle and his wife, where she remained for six years.

Dorothy Wordsworth dedicated her time to domestic duties and corresponded regularly to her brother William and her childhood friend, Jane Pollard.

William spent six weeks in Forncett at the end of 1790, during which time the Dorothy Wordsworth siblings began their enduring practice of undertaking long walks together.

In 1794, Dorothy Wordsworth was reunited with William after a three-year separation.

In 1802, Dorothy Wordsworth journeyed with William to Gallow Hill, Yorkshire for his marriage to Mary Hutchinson.

Dorothy Wordsworth played a devoted role in the lives of William and Mary's children born in the following years.

In 1803, Dorothy Wordsworth joined William and Samuel Taylor Coleridge on a six-week tour of the Scottish Highlands.

The Wordsworths settled in Rydal Mount in 1813, where Dorothy resided for the remainder of her life.

From 1824 to 1835, Dorothy Wordsworth wrote of daily events, with frequent gaps, in her Rydal Journals.

In 1829, Dorothy Wordsworth fell seriously ill, followed by a brief recovery period and eventual relapse in 1831.

Dorothy Wordsworth was primarily a diarist, and she wrote poetry though without much interest in becoming an established poet.

Dorothy Wordsworth almost published her account of traveling in Scotland with William and Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1803, Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland, but a publisher was not found, and it would not be published until 1874.

Dorothy Wordsworth wrote a very early account of an ascent of Scafell Pike in 1818, climbing the mountain in the company of her friend Mary Barker, Miss Barker's maid, and two local people to act as guide and porter.

Dorothy Wordsworth drew inspiration from Dorothy's journal entry of the sibling's encounter with a field of daffodils:.

Dorothy Wordsworth's works came to light just as literary critics were beginning to re-examine women's role in literature.

Scholar Anne Mellor has identified Dorothy Wordsworth as demonstrating a "model of affiliation rather than a model of individual achievement", more commonly associated with Romanticism.