Dorothy Wordsworth’s Lake District: Poems from the Commonplace Book

Dorothy Wordsworth was an active poet for much of her life. Unlike her brother, William, however, she only published a few of her poems during her lifetime. This does not mean that her verse was unknown, as she shared her poems with her family members and social circle. She also returned to her poems throughout her adult life, recopying, rereading and revising them. This edition gathers her poetry as it appears in a single notebook, DCMS 120, into which she copied and revised most of her poems, as well as some other miscellaneous content. Dorothy purchased this notebook in November 1820, when on a visit to France, and most of these poems were written and entered in the notebook between 1826 and 1840, as best we can tell, though some poems may date to an earlier period. In total, the notebook contains 24 poems in 37 versions.