Dorothy Wordsworth wrote for nearly seventy years but published almost nothing. Her work, however, has been preserved, admired, and is finally achieving nearly complete publication. The issues her writing raises for the modern reader are significant. What constitutes a literary text? Can descriptions of baking gingerbread, washing one's hair, doing laundry, or looking at flowers be literature? Dorothy's preferred form of expression was the journal, and she characteristically wrote about the seeming trivia of everyday life. Reading Dorothy Wordsworth's journals, one inevitably feels in the presence of a "real author"; yet partly because of her own self-denigration she has often not been regarded as such.

For Dorothy Wordsworth, as for many women, the process of journal writing was the process of establishing an identity. As she describes a landscape, ironing shirts, or sitting with a child, she organizes her emotions. She also wrote stories, letters, and poems. All...