ABSTRACT
Dorothy Wordsworth's Alfoxden and Grasmere Journals have presented a source of both frustration and fascination to autobiographical criticism concerned with the expression and revelation of self. Wordsworth's journals pose the critical question of whether the qualities of freedom and wildness Dorothy Wordsworth shares with animals, children and nature can be appreciated without condescension and negative judgment. As Sarah Zimmerman has convincingly shown, Dorothy Wordsworth offers some of the Romantic period's 'keenest insights' into the liabilities and costs of the lyric's 'focus on the autobiographical speaker' and the exposure to the reading audience resulting from that attention. William has requested that Dorothy preserve this story, local lore is woven into Dorothy's personal journal as potential material for future public poetry. Restrained and reticent to the end, Dorothy Wordsworth offers a challenge to the reader accustomed to the surfeit of twenty-first century autobiographical excess.
