Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, Vol. 1 (of 2)

The journals begin in January 1798, at a farmhouse called Alfoxden in Somerset. Dorothy Wordsworth is twenty-three years old, living with her brother William and their friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge. What unfolds over these pages is nothing less than the birth of English Romanticism, told from an unexpected perspective. Dorothy walks the hills and hedgerows daily, recording what she sees with an accuracy and tenderness that would later feed directly into some of the most celebrated poems in the English language. This is not William's polished, philosophical version of nature. This is raw, immediate perception from a woman who saw clearly and recorded faithfully: the way light fell on a hillside at dawn, the first snowdrops of February, the sound of a thrush singing in rain. Her prose has the quality of poetry itself, precise and alight with attention. The journals also reveal the intellectual equality of her relationship with William, her deep feeling for Coleridge, and the domestic textures of their household. For readers who want to understand how poetry gets made, or for anyone who believes that paying attention to the world is its own form of art.