The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth

This volume prints more than 150 letters, most of them previously unpublished, which appeared too late for inclusion in the second edition of The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth (1967-88): they are indispensable for understanding the poet and the inner dynamics of the Wordsworth circle. Of outstanding interest are the unexpectedly tender and fervent letters which Wordsworth wrote to his wife Mary during brief periods of separation in 1810 and 1812: others provide fresh evidence about his contacts with Annette Vallon and his `French' daughter Caroline long after his withdrawal from revolutionary politics in France, and indeed up to the end of his life. Further letters illustrate the poet's literary and personal relations with Coleridge, Hazlitt, De Quincey, and Charles Lamb; his changing political and social views; his life in the Lake District and London; and, above all, his lifelong commitment to poetry and the principles that guided his imaginative life. These letters, varied in tone and subject-matter, will do much to dispel the ideal that he was invariably a reluctant or reserved correspondent. Dorothy Wordsworth, by contrast, fills out all the details of domestic life which her brother thought it unnecessary to dwell on, and her letters add their own characteristic touches to the picture of the Wordsworth circle - until the final breakdown of her health.