The Love Letters of William and Mary Wordsworth - by William Wordsworth & Mary Wordsworth (Paperback)

About the Book

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.

Book Synopsis

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 topics: 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.

Review Quotes

Conscientiously edited by Beth Darlington and handsomely printed by Cornell... these letters display and intense affection between William and Mary which was not only spiritual but physically passionate as well.... They show us a serious, but far more appealing man than his reputation suggests--hungry for news of his children, courting his wife's affection, and seeking to entertain her with tidbits about the life and landscape around him.

Discovered in 1977 at an auction of Wordsworth family papers at Sotheby's, this collection of 31 letters is an important contribution to the interpretation of the poet's life. Ranging from the prosaic to the passionate, they reveal a close and tender relationship. Darlington's excellent introduction to the individual letters provide biographical continuity and identify persons and places alluded to in the correspondence. A major addition to Wordsworth scholarship, this collection is highly recommended for all readers interested in Romantic literature.

These letters give us an attractive and sometimes affecting glimpse of the Wordsworths.... Darlington's editing is enthusiastic and unpedantically helpful, the letters themselves have the unstudied freshness of lived life, and their publication constitutes a major event for students of English Romanticism.

About the Author

Beth Darlington is Professor of English and Director of Victorian Studies at Vassar College.