Journals Of Dorothy Wordsworth - Vol I

JOURNALS OF DOROTHY WORDSWORTH edited by WILLIAM KNIGHT. VOLUME I originally published in 1904. PREFATORY NOTE ...... vii I. DOROTHY WORDSWORTHS JOURNAL, WRITTEN AT ALFOXDEN FROM 20TH JANUARY TO 22ND MAY 1798 ..... i II. DOROTHY WORDSWORTHS JOURNAL OF DAYS SPENT AT HAMBURGH IN SEPTEMBER AND OCTOBER 1798 ...... 19 III. DOROTHY WORDSWORTHS JOURNAL, WRITTEN AT GRASMERE i4TH MAY TO 2isT DECEM BER 1800 ....... 29 IV. DOROTHY WORDSWORTHS JOURNAL, WRITTEN AT GRASMERE FROM IOTH OCTOBER 1801 TO 29TH DECEMBER 1801 . . . 61 V. DOROTHY WORDSWORTHS JOURNAL, WRITTEN AT GRASMERE FROM IST JANUARY 1802 TO STH JULY 1802 - 77 VI. DOROTHY WORDSWORTHS JOURNAL, WRITTEN AT GRASMERE gTH JULY 1802 TO IITH JANUARY 1803 . . . . . 139 VII. RECOLLECTIONS OF A TOUR MADE IN SCOTLAND A. D. 1803 159. PREFATORY NOTE: THE Journals written by Dorothy Wordsworth, and her reminiscences of Tours made with her brother, are more interesting to posterity than her letters. A few fragments from her Grasmere Journal were included by the late Bishop of Lincoln in the Memoirs of his uncle, published in 1850. The Recollections of a Tour made in Scotland in 1803, were edited in full by the late Principal Shairp in the year 1874 third edition 1894. In 1889, I included in my Life of William Wordsworth most of the Journal written at Alfoxden, much of that referring to Hamburg, and the greater part of the longer Grasmere Journal. Some extracts from the Journal of a Tour on the Continent made in 1820 and of a similar one written by Mrs. Words worth, as well as short records of subsequent visits to Scotland and to the Isle of Man, were printed in the same volume. None of these, however, were given in their entirety nor is it desirable now to print them in extensQ except in the case of the Recollections of a Tour made in Scotland in 1803. All the Journals con tain numerous trivial details, which bear ample witness to the plain living and high thinking of the Words worth household and, in this edition, samples of these details are given but there is no need to record all the cases in which the sister wrote, To-day I mended Williams shirts, or William gathered sticks, or I went in search of eggs, etc. etc. In all cases, however, in which a sentence or paragraph, or several sentences and paragraphs, in the Journals are left out, the omission is indicated by means of asterisks. Nothing is omitted of any literary or biographical value. Some persons may think that too much has been recorded, others that everything should have been printed. As to this, posterity must judge. I think that many, in future years, will value these Journals, not only as a record of the relations existing between Wordsworth and his sister, his wife her family and his friends, but also as an illustration of the remarkable literary brotherhood and sisterhood of the period. Coming now to details. I I do not know of any Journal written at Racedown, and I do not think that Dorothy kept one while she and her brother lived in Dorsetshire. In July 1797 they took up their residence at Alfoxden but, so far as is known, it was not till the 2oth of January 1798 that Dorothy began to write a Journal of her own and her brothers life at that place. It was continued un interruptedly till Thursday, 22nd May 1798. It gives numerous details as to the visits of Coleridge to Alfoxden, and the Wordsworths 5 visits to him at Nethcr-Stowey, as well as of the circumstances under which several of their poems were composed...