Exploring Dorothy Wordsworth's Commonplace Book

Dorothy Wordsworth kept a commonplace book between 1820 and 1836. Mostly in her handwriting, it contains a variety of letters, recipes, home remedies, newspaper clippings and her own poems. In this event on 24 March 2022 Professor Michelle Levy and Principal Curator Jeff Cowton explore Dorothy’s commonplace book page by page, discussing Dorothy’s poetic practices of composition and revision, comparing with other samples of her poems as they appear in letters and other documents. They also look at the narrative pieces she copies and the clippings she pastes in, as well as the way that Dorothy organised the contents of the book.
About the speakers
Michelle Levy is a Professor of English at Simon Fraser University. She has written extensively on authorial practices, the cultures of print and script, and female authors of the Romantic period, including Jane Austen, Lucy Aikin, Anna Barbauld, Mary Shelley and Dorothy Wordsworth. She is co-editor of the Romantic Circles Electronic Edition Dorothy Wordsworth’s Lake District, coming in 2022. She is also the director of Women’s Print History Project, 1750-1830, a comprehensive bibliographical database of women’s books.
Jeff Cowton is Principal Curator & Head of Learning at Wordsworth Grasmere.