Victoria Glendinning

Anorexia, addiction, child-swapping — the Lake Poets would have alarmed social services

The Poets' Daughters, by Katie Waldegrave — review

Robert Southey with his daughters was considered the most responsible of the Lake Poets. Credit (all images) The Bridgean Art Library 
issue 05 October 2013

The last time the general reader was inveigled into the domestic intensities of the Wordsworth circle was by Frances Wilson in The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth. She engaged delicately with Dorothy’s inordinate love for her younger brother William, and seemed to think her passionate attachment was romantic and sentimental rather than sexual — though there are 50 shades of grey between the one and the other, and honestly, it doesn’t matter.

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