Dorothy Wordsworth’s Rydal Journals

Despite Dorothy Wordsworth’s having long ago entered the pantheon of English diarists, only brief segments of the fifteen notebook diaries that she filled between 1824 and 1835 - known collectively as the Rydal Journals - have appeared in previous collections of her works. This scholarly edition of the entirety of these later journals therefore represents a signal event for the field of British Romanticism in general and researchers of Dorothy Wordsworth in particular, as it makes available what may be the last great trove of unpublished life writing by a major writer of early nineteenth-century Britain. The Rydal Journals cover a pivotal decade in Dorothy’s life, chronicling her transition from an indefatigable fifty-three-year-old in her physical and intellectual prime to a rapidly declining sixty-three-year-old confined to an upstairs sickroom at Rydal Mount. Accordingly, they offer both a heightened appreciation of her remarkable gift for capturing the pleasures of everyday life and an affecting account of the onset of disability and old age. Besides providing a reliable transcription of the complete contents of the Rydal Journals - including not only Dorothy’s diary entries but also miscellaneous materials like her expense ledgers, Bible study notes, and poetry drafts - this edition also features thousands of contextual footnotes and detailed introductions to important people, places, and events referenced across the fifteen notebooks.