The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth: A Life

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