The Second, Third & Fourth Notebooks of Grasmere

A spacious freedom – no rules and structures. Times for noticing, times for doing; times for recollecting and recording – for diary writing, in length or hurriedly. A dash here, a dash there, a deletion, an insertion. An observation – an encounter with a Miss or Mr. A study of nature – the natural and the human; a journal to amuse, possibly inspire, William. A journal of Home.

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II. 10 October 1801 – 14 February 1802
A small book bound in blue marbled board. A book in part already used to record a journey made to Hamburg (1798) – its tour, its sums and expenses; to test a freshly made nib as one might do now an old or new Bic on a scrap of paper; to draft a few poetic words; to jot some notes which are only of import to the jotter, but which others after try to make sense of. A book that ends with a full stop and not, unlike the first, mid-sentence.

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III. 14 February 1802 – 2 May 1802
Its boards much worn and covered in dull brown-black paper. Its pages again used by both Dorothy and William in Germany; marked with German grammar and Lessing's Fables, followed by an unfinished prose attack on moralists; with the earliest passages of The Prelude – W's childhood. Some pages cut out and the rest muddled as always with dates and crossing-throughs and No letters! Closing on Sunday 2^nd May with a letter from Coleridge; and leaving, as an interlude, one blank page.

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IV. 4 May 1802 – 16 January 1803
A small fat notebook bound in leather, fastened by a clasp, containing with the Journal W's draft of Michael, new stanzas for Ruth, and his extracts from Descartes. D's writing however fills the major part, interleaved with pink blotting paper.

Written December 2021.

See Pamela Woof's notes to The Grasmere and Alfoxden Journals by Dorothy Wordsworth (Oxford World's Classics).

Picture credit: Dove Cottage, Grasmere, April 2021 (source: Wikipedia).