Dorothy Wordsworth's Rydal Journals - (Romantic Reconfigurations: Studies in Literature and Culture 1780-1850) by Nicholas Mason (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Although Dorothy Wordsworth's journals have long been celebrated for their vibrant and keen-eyed portraits of everyday life, until now only brief excerpts have been available from her most extensive set of diaries - the fifteen notebooks from 1824-35 that have come to be known as the Rydal Journals. This scholarly edition of the complete contents of these journals therefore marks a watershed moment for the study of this remarkable woman and, more generally, the shifting literary, cultural, and political realities of Reform-era Britain. The first half of the Rydal Journals chronicles the comings and goings of a buoyant fifty-something still in her physical and intellectual prime, capturing her bustling social life when at home in the Lakes and her zeal for new adventures when travelling to Manchester, Yorkshire, the Midlands, the Welsh Marches, and the Isle of Man. The ensuing half, by contrast, offers an alternately inspiring and heart-breaking record of the diarist's attempts to find joy and meaning amid the sudden onset of old age and disability that followed her near-fatal illness of 1829. Besides providing long-overdue access to what may be the last great trove of unpublished life writing by a major English Romantic, this edition surrounds the text of the journals with dozens of illustrations, a wealth of explanatory footnotes, and engaging introductions to the people, places, and events that helped define this pivotal decade of Dorothy Wordsworth's life.

Review Quotes

'This is a very significant edition. It makes available for the first time the largest remaining unpublished archive of Dorothy Wordsworth's manuscripts in its entirety and with extensive (and enjoyable!) footnotes which amplify our understanding of the people, places and events found in the text. It is an edition that is long overdue - we now see into the later life of its author and her family in the busy goings on at Rydal Mount. We can read also of her travels, her poetry and the beginnings of her serious illness. It is also the story of the journal notebooks themselves - of what has and hasn't survived within them. This is clearly one of the most important books to come from the Wordsworth Trust's archive during my 43 years as this collection's curator.' Jeff Cowton MBE, Principal Curator at the Wordsworth Trust

'The historical research that the editors have done in public records, archives, letters, and the published and unpublished writings of other writers is a most generous gift to those of us who think Dorothy Wordsworth's prose writings about feelings, landscapes, people, weather - about life - are some of the most individual and golden writings that we have.' Pamela Woof, Newcastle University (emeritus) and editor of the Grasmere Journals

'This monumental edition provides a record of Dorothy Wordsworth's full life as it tips from middle into premature old age lived in tune with natural rhythms, starkly recorded in Dorothy's crisp journal entries like so many icy leaves along a winter's branch. The extensive annotations, including biographies of friends and acquaintances and detailed notes about the events to which Dorothy refers, will be a boon to anyone studying Dorothy Wordsworth's life and writings, as well as those interested in Lakeland life as the Romantic age transitioned towards the Victorian era. Mason and Sutton have delivered a period-altering edition that extends our knowledge of Dorothy Wordsworth's life, the places to which she travelled, and the Wordsworth households across this key decade of personal and national transformation.' Dr Joanna Taylor, University of Manchester

'With the publication of the Rydal Journals, expertly edited by Nick Mason and Susanne Sutton, we are finally able to read them almost exactly two hundred years after Dorothy Wordsworth began them, in December 1824. With superbly detailed introductions and annotations, we encounter a Dorothy who is both recognizable and new, as her later years were shaped by her love of the natural world and her domestic circle, but also by aging, illness and disability.' Professor Michelle Levy, Simon Fraser University

'Mason and Sutton's edition of the Rydal Journals is an outstanding addition to those of the Grasmere and Alfoxden journals and the Wordsworths' letters. The extratextual materials are extraordinary for their historical insight and detail, and the scholarly apparatus surrounding and supporting the journal transcriptions provides invaluable insight into the early journals and letters as well. This is a must-have publication, revelatory for its revision of Dorothy Wordsworth's later years as creative, insightful, and worthy of study.' Professor Elizabeth Fay, University of Massachusetts Boston