William Wordsworth, The White Doe of Rylstone

Jacob Risinger (Ohio State University)

Ed. by Daniel Robinson, Widener University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.06: English Writing and Culture of the Romantic Period, 1789-1837.
Vol. editors: Daniel Cook (University of Dundee), Daniel Robinson (Widener University), Emily Rohrbach (University of Durham)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1815

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Ballad
Pastoral
Poetry (any)

Resources

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In July of 1807, Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy visited Bolton Abbey on a trip to Yorkshire. By October of that year, he was brushing up on Bolton Abbey’s local history, devouring Thomas Whitaker’s

History and Antiquities of the Deanery of Craven

and rereading an old ballad on “The Rising in the North” from Thomas Percy’s

Reliques of Ancient EnglishPoetry

. By December 1807, Dorothy could report that Wordsworth had composed “above 500 lines of a new poem” (

1: 179). In many ways the last of Wordsworth’s lyrical ballads,

The White Doe of Rylstone

was, as Dorothy observed, “very different from any other poem that my Brother has written” (

1: 187).

No one—including Wordsworth himself—has ever known exactly what to make of this difference. Though diverging from

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1892 words

Citation: Risinger, Jacob. "The White Doe of Rylstone". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 28 April 2012 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=8142, accessed 23 November 2024.]

William Wordsworth, The White Doe of Rylstone

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