Free Ebook The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth: A Life, by Frances Wilson
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The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth: A Life, by Frances Wilson
Free Ebook The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth: A Life, by Frances Wilson
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Described by the writer and opium addict Thomas De Quincey as “the very wildest . . . person I have ever known,” DorothyWordsworth was neither the self-effacing spinster nor the sacrificial saint of common telling. A brilliant stylist in her own right, Dorothy was at the center of the Romantic movement of the early nineteenth century. She was her brother William Wordsworth’s inspiration, aide, and most valued reader, and a friend to Coleridge; both borrowed from her observations of the world for their own poems.William wrote of her, “She gave me eyes, she gave me ears.”
In order to remain at her brother’s side, Dorothy sacrificed both marriage and comfort, jealously guarding their close-knit domesticity—one marked by a startling freedom from social convention. In the famed Grasmere Journals, Dorothy kept a record of this idyllic life together. The tale that unfolds through her brief, electric entries reveals an intense bond between brother and sister, culminating in Dorothy’s dramatic collapse on the day of William’s wedding to their childhood friend Mary Hutchinson. Dorothy lived out the rest of her years with her brother and Mary. The woman who strode the hills in all hours and all weathers would eventually retreat into the house for the last three decades of her life.
In this succinct, arresting biography, Frances Wilson reveals Dorothy in all her complexity. From the coiled tension of Dorothy’s journals, she unleashes the rich emotional life of a woman determined to live on her own terms, and honors her impact on the key figures of Romanticism.
- Sales Rank: #796048 in Books
- Published on: 2009-02-17
- Released on: 2009-02-17
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.52" h x 1.16" w x 5.88" l, 16.80 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 336 pages
From Publishers Weekly
This sensitive and elegantly written life of Dorothy Wordsworth (1771–1855), sister of the poet William Wordsworth, centers on four small notebooks, her so-called Grasmere Journals. These journals reveal how William functioned as Dorothy's male muse and how she, more traditionally, was his. What is most untraditional, and certainly peculiar, is the not-quite-stated true relationship between brother and sister. Commentators and biographers describe Dorothy Wordsworth as having virtually no inner life, existing solely for and through her brother. Yet, Wilson relates, the opium-eater De Quincey found her a most sensuous creature; she was a big part of William's friendship with Coleridge as well. First teasing out Dorothy's truly rich interior life through careful examination of the journals and other writings, Wilson (Literary Seductions) then uncovers the nature of Dorothy's emotional connections to William, his work, his wife and even the French mistress he had as a younger man. Most controversial in the Grasmere Journals are several blotted lines regarding William's wedding ring—which Dorothy wore to sleep the night before the wedding. These lines, as well as Dorothy's visionary tendencies, her migraines and trances, almost of an epileptic nature, and a long depressive decline are scrupulously analyzed. 31 illus. (Feb. 24)
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From Booklist
*Starred Review* Wilson investigated such intimate writerly alliances as the marriage of Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley in Literary Seductions (2000) and now returns to the realm of the Romantic poets in this highly charged and forthright biography of Dorothy Wordsworth, sister and muse to William. Speculation runs high regarding the true nature of the intense bond between these unconventional siblings known for their epic country walks during which William composed the poetry Dorothy put to paper. Reunited after a harsh childhood separation in the wake of their mother’s early death, they lived and traveled together even after William married Mary Hutchinson (Dorothy even accompanied them on their honeymoon). Wilson emphasizes Dorothy’s heightened response to nature in her writing, especially the oft-studied Grasmere Journals, analyzing both her rhapsodic passages and “crisp forensic objectivity,” and surmises that Dorothy suffered from migraines and anorexia. Wilson then squarely addresses the incest question, arguing that Dorothy and William’s closeness was spiritual, not carnal, and that the two writers needed each other to feel whole. A “perpetual third party,” Dorothy Wordsworth finally steps out of the shadows in this assured and involving reclamation of an intriguing, literary figure. --Donna Seaman
Review
“Elegant . . . Ms. Wilson’s decision to limit her scope was a small bit of genius. She’s written a succinct yet roomy book, one that moves along with novelistic buoyancy and grace. She gets the facts-to-fancy ratio, always a difficult one for a biographer to weigh, exactly right. She lays out the essentials of Dorothy Wordsworth’s life like a well-orchestrated banquet, leaving no doubt that the resonating years 1800–3 are the bravura main course . . . In The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth, Ms. Wilson strides purposefully through Wordsworth’s intoxicating life, quibbling when needed with earlier biographers, poking into every bit of tangled brush, triangulating her subject’s life through the work of many other writers, some of them contemporary. The range of this biographer’s references is wide, and wickedly inclusive. One chapter begins with a quotation from the political-punk band Gang of Four: ‘This heaven gives me migraine.’ This book, its own kind of heaven, gave me quite the opposite.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times
“Entertaining and sometimes ingenious . . . Wilson . . . makes a strong case for taking a fresh look at Dorothy Wordsworth . . . [She] dives deep and headlong into the journals, applying various modern psychological and medical hypotheses. She comes up with some fascinating insights.” —Jamie James, Los Angeles Times
“Sensitive and elegantly written.” —Publishers Weekly
“Frances Wilson’s gifts as a textual critic, and her flair for dramatic storytelling, have delivered a new and potent Dorothy Wordsworth for the 21st century. In its precision and subtlety, her book has the power of a great portrait miniature.” —Mark Bostridge, The Independent on Sunday
“[Wilson] is not always respectful, but she is always interesting . . . This gripping narrative presents a character more subtle than the devoted, self-effacing amanuensis of tradition, or the later feminist stereotype.” —Margaret Drabble, The Times Literary Supplement
“[A] fine biography . . . Eloquent in her revelation of Dorothy’s tormented private self, Wilson is equally sensitive and astute in her reading of the journals.” —Miranda Seymour, The Times (London)
“The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth doesn’t disappoint . . . She writes with a definite sense of astonishment, but controls it with calm scholarly interest and a prevailing mood of humane tolerance. The combination is deeply attractive and original.” —Andrew Motion, The Guardian
“Beautifully written, at times combative, and displaying a formidable knowledge of literature . . . Dorothy emerges as a fascinating woman—neither a handmaiden nor a victim but a talented and broken human being.” —Richard King, The Sydney Morning Herald
“[An] enjoyable and original book . . . Frances Wilson sensitively analyses this intense relationship, and provides a cleverly structured commentary on the journal as a whole . . . Wilson is a good scholar and her judgment is sound; moreover, she is not afraid to use her imagination to carefully explore what cannot be verified.” —Adam Sisman, The Irish Times
“Sympathetic . . . Informed by delicacy and common sense . . . The writing is often lovely, and there are many moving, observant collations between the journal entries and William’s poems.” —Ann Wroe, The Daily Telegraph
“This searing portrait of Dorothy Wordsworth draws on her celebrated journals but refracts them through a distinctly now sensibility. This is not the Dorothy so movingly addressed at the conclusion of her brother’s magnum opus ‘Tintern Abbey.’ Nor is this the self-effacing sororal companion of the poet’s youth, and helpmeet and support of his sedate later life. Here, she is at the center of a nest of incest, anorexia, and destructive passions reminiscent of Wuthering heights (indeed, Wilson speculates that Emily Brontë based Heathcliff and Cathy on her understanding of the relationship between the Wordsworth siblings). For all the author’s aggressively contemporary psychological perspectives, Wilson has produced a deeply insightful, disturbing correcting to the conventional understanding of the angel of Dove Cottage.” —The Atlantic Monthly “Graceful, perceptive and poignant.” —Kirkus Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
22 of 22 people found the following review helpful.
Strange fits of passion, indeed --
By Philadelphia Reader
This biography was by turns acute, impressionistic, and provocative. I am still musing on it days later. I thoroughly enjoyed Wilson's teasing out of Dorothy Wordsworth's interior life, which takes a lot of concentrated study, I would guess, judging by the fragments of Wordsworth's journals that are reproduced here. She seems to be a writer whose prime interest was in containment and re-direction. I wish I had read a more conventional biography of her first, however, as The Ballad does not make a claim to be a cradle to grave re-telling; rather it is concerned with the psychological reality of a high point in Wordsworth's life, the three years she spent with her brother in the Lake District. Coming to her life a relative innocent, thus, it was hard for me to put some of the incidents in context.
As much richness as Wilson is able to bring out of her material, however, I did wish that at some places she had pushed for more. A few times in the book we're given tantalizing glimpses of how William Wordsworth might have been a controlling presence -- he tried to prevent his daughter from marrying, for instance, and seemed to have used up all the emotional intensity of two women, his sister and his wife, as his due. How would that characteristic have played out in the intimate confines of Dove Cottage before his marriage? Conversely, how did Dorothy manipulate those around her? She seems to have had a magnetic effect not only on her brother but on the other writers of that group, Coleridge and de Quincy, for instance. How was that accomplished? And how was this played out with relatively powerless people? Wilson mentions that Dorothy wanted to control the behavior of William's oldest daughter because the little girl's energetic personality was recognized as too wild and in need of subjection. But might Dorothy also have wanted little Dora out of the way (she was sent to boarding school at the more than tender age of 4) because she recognized a rival to herself?
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
A Sister's Tale
By Barbara Stoner
Liked this book very much. It was a friendly companion on my recent trip - I finished it in the village of Grasmere, not a block from where Dorothy and William Wordsworth are buried. It would be easy to call her life tragic, but in view of the times in which she lived, she was able to live at least some semblance of a life she chose.
1 of 14 people found the following review helpful.
WORDSWORTH: WILLIAM DA BORE
By Jack Peachum/ Milton G. Crocker
ACADEMIC BOOK GUY HERE/ JACK PEACHUM:
There are folks to whom excitement doesn't come easy-- & there are others to whom it never comes at all.
The only problem w/ this book-- & one I was half-expecting when I bought it-- is the subject matter. Wordsworth was the dullest human being who ever walked the face of the earth-- & his sister ain't far behind him.
If he ever had an exciting thought, he didn't write it down.
A democratic-revolutionary in France? That's just not possible!
Wordsworth's poetry is dull, his life is dull, his sister is dull-- dull dull DULL! If the author could've proved some incest-- but between you & me, I think even incest between these two would've been boring! The kind of BJ where you nod off even before the action gets going.
On the other hand, the writing of this biographer is good-- better than the Fraud of the Lakes. I can't say enough about the biographer-- she almost manages to lift the snooze-powder out of the life here portrayed.
I'd pass this tome along to someone who's got an evening to kill & a PHD to earn.
ACADEMIC BOOK GUY/ JACK PEACHUM
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