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THE BALLAD OF DOROTHY WORDSWORTH
By: Frances Wilson
A Life
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
February 2009
On Sale: February 17, 2009
336 pages
ISBN: 0374108676
EAN: 9780374108670
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
Described by the writer and opium addict Thomas De Quincey as βthe very wildest . . . person I have ever known,β 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 Wordsworthβs 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, βShe gave me eyes, she gave me ears.β In order to remain at her brotherβs side, Dorothy sacrificed both marriage and comfort, jealously guarding their close-knit domesticityβone 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 Dorothyβs dramatic collapse on the day of Williamβs 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 Dorothyβs 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.
 Media BuzzAll Things Considered - March 22, 2009
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