Dorothy Wordsworth

In the late summer and early autumn of 1803, Dorothy Wordsworth undertook an extraordinary 663-mile journey through the Scottish Lowlands and southwestern Highlands, with her brother William and, for a short time, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. On their return home, she recorded, with warmth, wit and crisp imagery, her recollections of the adventures, sights and unspoiled, romantic landscape of the tour. Her engaging "journal" is now republished in this beautiful volume that provides remarkable black-and-white photographs of the Scottish scenes described. Carol Kyros Walker has captured the essence of these places in a photographic essay that follows each week of Wordsworth's recollections. Walker also contributes an introduction to locate events of the journey within their historical setting and to explain the significance of this trip for the three participants; a discussion of Dorothy Wordsworth's skills as a writer; extensive notes to clarify her many allusions; and a map of the itinerary.

Dorothy Wordsworth writes an account of a Grasmere tragedy in 1808, where husband and wife George and Sarah Green are killed in a snow storm. Six of their eight children, aged one to eleven waited at home for two nights for their parents return. The story shows the response from the community locally and nationally.

The beautiful and peaceful heart of the Lake District, Grasmere was an inspiration to both Dorothy and William Wordsworth. Hills, lakes and orchards, letter writing, walks and welcome visitors (including fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge) provoked in Dorothy's journal great, lyrical prose, which in turn influenced her brother's unsurpassed poetry. The two – journal entries and poems – are here set side by side, a glorious celebration of life and nature around Dove Cottage, over the first year they called it home. Generations of inhabitants have helped shape the English countryside – but it has profoundly shaped us too.It has provoked a huge variety of responses from artists, writers, musicians and people who live and work on the land – as well as those who are travelling through it.English Journeys celebrates this long tradition with a series of twenty books on all aspects of the countryside, from stargazey pie and country churches, to man's relationship with nature and songs celebrating the patterns of the countryside (as well as ghosts and love-struck soldiers).