Pamela Woof is a scholar and author, President of the Wordsworth Trust and widow of Dr Robert Woof whose energy and vision helped create one of the world’s great literary museums here in Grasmere. She’s also one of the brightest people I know; and this year she, along with curator Jeff Cowton, has put together, using manuscripts and letters, a major exhibition of the life and work of Dorothy Wordsworth.
The Romantic Movement was a social and cultural revolution of the late eighteenth/early nineteenth century that challenged and swept aside pre-conceived notions of class and hierarchy and shook the establishment to its core, laying the foundations for our modern society. Exponents grew their hair long, called for equality and social justice and expressed their ‘radical’ views through politics, art, literature and science. Regarded as dangerous and viewed with suspicion the passage below from the diary of a local parson at the time of the Wordsworth and Coleridges’ residence in Somerset gives an insight as to how they were generally perceived.
From the diaries of William Holland, a Somerset parson
Wednesday October 23rd 1799
Went with my wife to Stowey…saw that Democratic hoyden Mrs Coleridge who looked so like a friskey girl or something worse that I was not surprised that a Democratic Libertine should choose her for a wife. The husband gone to London suddenly, no one here can tell why. Met the patron of democrats, Mr Thos Poole who smiled and chatted a little. He was on his grey mare. Satan himself cannot be more false and hypocritical.
Throughout her life Dorothy was regarded as a peripheral figure in the Romantic Movement and her influence on her brother’s work was for many years overlooked. His constant companion and confidant, she was with Wordsworth and Coleridge during the conception and production of Lyrical Ballads, a book generally regarded as the Romantic Movement’s seminal work. Her hand is everywhere: from the sharing of ideas, the copying and re-copying of drafts to the characters and descriptions that find their way from the pages of her journals into her brother’s poems.
There is a timeless and effortless style to her writing that makes her so interesting and readable and a major exhibition of her life and work is long overdue.
Pamela is the acclaimed editor of Dorothy’s journals, and there are parallels. The exhibition opens a fascinating portal into the minds of two remarkable women.
Dorothy Wordsworth’s recipe for boiled gooseberry jam
7th August 1800
Boiled gooseberries – NB 2lbs of sugar in the first panful, 3 quarts all good measure – 3lb in the 2nd 4 quarts – 2 ½ lb in the 3rd
Dorothy Wordsworth ‘Wonders of the Everyday’ was opened by Carol Ann Duffy on 11 April and runs until January 5th 2014
For opening times and more information go to wordsworth.org.uk
Next week: Blackburn Blues
Lovely photo of Pamela. Mark, what an interesting backyard you have and what fascinating people you find in it! Most enjoyable blog. Keep up the good work.
Thank you; and thanks for taking the trouble to leave a comment. Mark
Hi Mark,
I am the poetry editor of Gold Dust Magazine. In the December Issue of the Magazine we will be publishing an Interview with Pamela Woof and I was wondering if you would mind if we used your lovely photo of Dove Cottage to illustrate it. I would also like to use the photo of Pamela on your Blog though she did stipulate no photos of herself and I will have to persuade her to rescind this restriction. How did you persuade to let you use this delightful and so typical portrait of her?
Best Wishes
Dave
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Dear Mark,
I am the Executive Office Team Leader at Newcastle University and we will be welcoming Pamela Woof to our campus for an event during December 2022 and I was wondering if we might use your photo of Pamela in our brochure. I am in contact with Mrs Woof and she has suggested that she does not have any electronic photos of herself at this time, and so I was wondering if we might use yours. Please let me know if you need any further information from me at this time.
Thanks and best wishes,
Heidi Shultz
I would like to ask Pamela Woof a question,if that is possible please. I do not have her email address. I run a group of 10 people who meet just once every other month and each time we meet we read out and discuss a couple of short stories and a couple of poems. . We meet last Sunday, and I presented something which was inspired by a book I read recently in Penguin Classics,’Dorothy and William Wordsworth, Home at Grasmere’, Extracts from the Journal of Dorothy Wordsworth and the Poems of William Wordsworth. This was about the great influence that Dorothy’s writings in her Journals often had on William’s poems written shortly afterwards, and I quoted the particular example of her influence on his very famous poem ‘The Daffodils’. This led to some members of the group to wonder whether perhaps Dorothy had actually written some of his poems, but that they had at that time to be published under his name, with her being a woman. And if this is not true, whether or not they had perhaps collaborated over some of his poetry. I would very much welcome Pamela’s views on this, if this is at all possible. (Re your comment and my inability to submit this question, I have NOT already said all of this, nor have I asked this question before. Maybe I cannot submit my question because I don’t have a website?).