Dorothy "Dora" Wordsworth (16 August 1804 – 9 July 1847) was the daughter of poet

William Wordsworth William Wordsworth (7 April 177023 April 1850) was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication '' Lyrical Ballads'' (1798). Wordsworth's ' ...

(1770–1850) and his wife Mary Hutchinson. Her infancy inspired William Wordsworth to write "Address to My Infant Daughter" in her honour. As an adult, she was further immortalised by him in the 1828 poem "The Triad", along with Edith Southey and Sara Coleridge, daughters of her father's fellow

Lake Poets The Lake Poets were a group of English poets who all lived in the Lake District of England, United Kingdom, in the first half of the nineteenth century. As a group, they followed no single "school" of thought or literary practice then known. They ...

. In 1843, at the age of 39, Dora Wordsworth married Edward Quillinan. While her father initially opposed the marriage, the "temperate but persistent pressure" exerted by

Isabella Fenwick Isabella Fenwick (1783 – 1856) was a 19th-century British amanuensis, and a confidante, advisor, and friend of William Wordsworth and his family in his later years. She is the scribe behind the ''Fenwick Notes'', an autobiographical and poetic ...

, a close family friend, convinced him to relent. Throughout her life, Wordsworth formed intense romantic attachments to both men and women, the most significant being her friendship with Maria Jane Jewsbury. Another close friend was Maria Kinnaird, adoptive daughter of Richard "Conversation" Sharp and the future wife of

Thomas Drummond Captain Thomas Drummond (10 October 1797 – 15 April 1840), from Edinburgh was a Scottish army officer, civil engineer and senior public official. He used the Drummond light which was employed in the trigonometrical survey of Great Britain an ...

. Wordsworth and Kinnaird were friends from their teenage years and some of their correspondence has survived. Described by her aunt and namesake Dorothy Wordsworth as "at times very beautiful", Dora Wordsworth was devoted to her father and a significant influence on his poetry. Their relationship was particularly close, with Coleridge's son Hartley describing how she "almost adored" him in an 1830 letter. However, Wordsworth also had literary abilities of her own, publishing a travel journal. Sara Coleridge complained after Wordsworth's death that her father's demands on her "frustrated a real talent". Wordsworth died of tuberculosis at her parents' home, and is buried in the graveyard of St Oswald's Church, Grasmere,

Cumbria Cumbria ( ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in North West England, bordering Scotland. The county and Cumbria County Council, its local government, came into existence in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972. C ...

, along with her parents and siblings, aunt Sarah Hutchinson, and Hartley Coleridge, son of

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge (; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake ...

. After her death, her distraught father (who had already lost two of his children to illness), planted hundreds of daffodils in her memory in a field (later named Dora's Field) beside St. Mary's Church, Rydal. The site of Dora's Field, where daffodils are still cultivated today, is now owned by the

National Trust The National Trust, formally the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, is a charity and membership organisation for heritage conservation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, there is a separate and ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wordsworth, Dora 1804 births 1847 deaths 19th-century deaths from tuberculosis Tuberculosis deaths in England English children Dora