Love Letters of William and Mary Wordsworth

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

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.(Washington Post Book World) 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.(Library Journal) 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.(Kirkus Reviews)