Born: 25 December 1771, United Kingdom
Died: 25 January 1855
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: NA
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women creator Allison Tyra’s book Uncredited: Women’s Overlooked, Misattributed, and Stolen Work.
William Wordsworth relied on his sister, wife, and daughter throughout his career. While the latter two (Mary and Dora, respectively) acted as his literary agents, his sister Dorothy was an uncredited editor, as well as transcriber and, after his death, literary executor. Wordsworth repeatedly used Dorothy’s own words without attribution, including descriptions in his successful guide book A Guide through the District of the Lakes and segments from her journals. His famed poem Daffodils uses a description originally written by Dorothy. Her own attempts to find a publisher for her Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland were unsuccessful and it was not published until almost 20 years after her own death.
The following is excerpted from Woman: Her Position, Influence and Achievement Throughout the Civilized World. Designed and Arranged by William C. King. Published in 1900 by The King-Richardson Co. Copyright 1903 The King-Richardson Co.
Dorothy Wordsworth, an English writer, sister to the poet William Wordsworth. In 1794 they determined that it would be best to combine their small capitals and that Dorothy should keep house for the poet. From this time forth her life ran on lines closely parallel to those of her great brother, whose companion she continued to be till his death. Her principal writings are her invaluable Journal of Wordsworths’ Life at Grasmere, and her Recollections of a Tour in Scotland.
She had a serious illness in 1829, and after 1836 was not considered to be entirely in possession of her mental faculties. Edmond Gosse says:
“It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of Dorothy Wordsworth’s companionship to her illustrious brother. He has left numerous tributes to it, and to the sympathetic originality of her perceptions. When Wordsworth and Coleridge refashioned imaginative literature at the close of the eighteenth century, they were daily and hourly accompanied by a feminine presence exquisitely attuned to sympathize with their efforts, and by an intelligence which was able and anxious to move in step with theirs.”
“S.T.C. and my beloved sister,” William Wordsworth wrote in 1832, “are the two things to whom my intellect is most indebted.”
It is not merely by the biographical value of her notes that Dorothy Wordsworth lives. She claims an independent place in the history of English prose as one of the very earliest writers who noted, in language delicately chosen, and with no other object than to preserve their fugitive beauty, the little picturesque phenomena of homely country life.