Dorothy Wordsworth

Born on 25 December 1771 in Cockermouth, Dorothy Wordsworth was an English author, poet, and diarist whose writing grew out of close attention to places, weather, gardens, walks, and ordinary domestic life. She lived much of her adult life alongside her brother William Wordsworth, and their companionship shaped both of their work.

She is best known today for her journals, especially the Grasmere Journals, which are admired for their vivid descriptions of nature and daily experience. Although she did not seek literary fame during her lifetime, her notebooks, letters, and poems have come to be valued in their own right for their clarity, warmth, and imaginative detail.

Dorothy Wordsworth died on 25 January 1855. Modern readers return to her not only because she helps illuminate the Romantic circle around William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, but because her own voice is so attentive, intimate, and alive to the world around her.