The Love Letters of William and Mary Wordsworth

by William Wordsworth, Mary Wordsworth, Beth Darlington (Editor)

The Love Letters of William and Mary Wordsworth collects 31 letters that William Wordsworth exchanged with his wife, Mary, during the early years of their marriage. These letters―fifteen from William to Mary and sixteen from her to him―were written during William's absences from home in 1810 and 1812 and offer an entirely new way of looking at the poet and his married life. Reproduced here with an informative introduction and headnotes by Beth Darlington that set each missive in biographical context, the letters cover a wide range of village life, Regency politics, poetry and painting, London gossip, rural manners, their five children, domestic activities, and family anecdotes. Yet along with these everyday incidents and practical concerns, there are tender passages in which the Wordsworths ardently declare their love for each other and reveal a profound happiness in their marriage. The William Wordsworth who emerges from this correspondence is a figure more relaxed, more accessible, and indeed more human that he has been pictured; May emerges as a woman of keen intelligence, energy, and imagination. Revealing how thoroughly Wordsworth shared his inner and passional life with Mary, this volume puts to rest the notion that theirs was a marriage of convenience.

272 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was a major English romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their 1798 joint publication, Lyrical Ballads.

Wordsworth's masterpiece is generally considered to be The Prelude, an autobiographical poem of his early years, which the poet revised and expanded a number of times. The work was posthumously titled and published, prior to which, it was generally known as the poem "to Coleridge". Wordsworth was England's Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death in 1850.

Reviews

[Alex Mesman · Rating 3 out of 5]

What is it with love letters between two people? I always feel as if i'm intruding. But still it is very interesting too. What the letters show is their (pre)occupation with the postal system, their health (to get fat or not to get fat, that's the question), their children and society in general and money affairs in particular. But what emerges most of all is the love between the two. They can not wait to be together again and they are very tender towards each other. And that is different from other biographies i've read about WW. Good read.