Recovering Dorothy

The first book to focus on Dorothy Wordsworth’s later life and work and the impact of her disability – allowing her to step out from her brother’s shadow and back into her own life story. Dorothy Wordsworth is well known as the author of the Alfoxden and Grasmere Journals (1798–1803) and as the sister of the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth. She is widely praised for her nature writing and is often remembered as a woman of great physical vitality. Less well known, however, is that Dorothy became seriously ill in 1829 and was mostly housebound for the last twenty years of her life. Her personal letters and unpublished journals from this time paint a portrait of a compassionate and creative woman who made her sickroom into a garden for herself and her pet robin and who finally grew to call herself a poet. They also reveal how vital Dorothy was to her brother’s success, and the closeness they shared as siblings. By re-examining her life through the perspective of her illness, this biography allows Dorothy Wordsworth to step out from her brother’s shadow and back into her own life story.

Dorothy Wordsworth is well known as the author of the Alfoxden and Grasmere Journals (1798-1803) and as the sister of the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth. She is widely praised for her nature writing and is often remembered as a woman of great physical vitality. Less well known, however, is that Dorothy became seriously ill in 1829 and was mostly housebound for the last twenty years of her life. Her personal letters and unpublished journals from this time paint a portrait of a compassionate and creative woman who made her sickroom into a garden for herself and her pet robin and who finally grew to call herself a poet. They also reveal how vital Dorothy was to her brother's success, and the closeness they shared as siblings. By re-examining her life through the perspective of her illness, this biography allows Dorothy Wordsworth to step out from her brother's shadow and back into her own life story.

William and Dorothy Wordsworth is the first literary biography of the Wordsworths' creative collaboration. Using poems, letters, journals, memoirs, and biographies, it plots the intertwined lives of the Wordsworth siblings and their writing.

Dorothy Stopford Price was arguably the most instrumental individual in eradicating the TB epidemic within Ireland. She introduced BCG to its shores which, to this day, prevent children from catching tuberculosis. This illuminating biography uncovers the importance of her medical work and of occasionally controversial measures that placed her in opposition to one of the strongest voices in Ireland at the time the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid. Prior to her trials and successes with the TB epidemic, her medical career and social standing determined a fascinating life story: born within the Protestant Ascendancy to an Anglo-Irish family and a guest of the under-secretary to the British Administration during the Easter Rising, she soon crossed a stark divide, developing an ardent republican outlook that led to her appointment as medical officer to a West Cork Flying Column of the IRA during the War of Independence. Her determination never ceased and in 1921 she channelled her energies towards eradicating TB in Ireland; at a time when the Irish medical profession looked to the United Kingdom for leadership, she taught herself German to access scientific literature at the fore of medical developments. Anne MacLellan s biography accounts for this provocative and indomitable life of an Irish woman frequently caught at the epicentre of Irish affairs.

The story of one woman's unflagging efforts to recover the history of her ancestors, slaves who had lived and worked at Somerset Place plantation.

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Recovering Identity examines a critical tension in criminalized women's identity work. Through in-depth qualitative and photo-elicitation interviews, Cesraéa Rumpf shows how formerly incarcerated women engaged recovery and faith-based discourses to craft rehabilitated identities, defined in opposition to past identities as "criminal-addicts." While these discourses made it possible for women to carve out spaces of personal protection, growth, and joy, they also promoted individualistic understandings of criminalization and the violence and dehumanization that followed. Honoring criminalized women's stories of personal transformation, Rumpf nevertheless strongly critiques institutions' promotion of narratives that impose lifelong moral judgment while detracting attention from the structural forces of racism, sexism, and poverty that contribute to women's vulnerability to violence.

"Material blessings always come and are a great joy at the time they are received. In due time they grow old and tattered and are discarded. They are the source of temporary happiness, but temporary only. True and lasting happiness is in our hearts. It is a peace of mind in the knowledge that we are doing God's will and living the good life. Being happy is important to good health. Happiness can only be attained by a practice of good thoughts toward all mankind; good wishes for everyone and a true generosity with all our worldly possessions; for truly it is more blessed to give than to receive." This is the true story of Dorothy Kelley Ashby, a devout Catholic, and her struggle for emotional peace, financial security and happiness for her Pearl Harbor-surviving husband and her family. Dorothy's life was not a bed of roses! She had her challenges-some beyond her capacity to fix-yet she continued to endure and faced all things with charity, faith, and composed grace.

“Magisterial and glorious” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette), the first full authoritative biography of Dorothy Day—American icon, radical pacifist, Catholic convert, and advocate for the homeless—is “a vivid account of her political and religious development” (Karen Armstrong, The New York Times). After growing up in a conservative middle-class Republican household and working several years as a left-wing journalist, Dorothy Day converted to Catholicism and became an anomaly in American life for the next fifty years. As an orthodox Catholic, political radical, and a rebel who courted controversy, she attracted three generations of admirers. A believer in civil disobedience, Day went to jail several times protesting the nuclear arms race. She was critical of capitalism and US foreign policy, and as skeptical of modern liberalism as political conservatism. Her protests began in 1917, leading to her arrest during the suffrage demonstration outside President Wilson’s White House. In 1940 she spoke in Congress against the draft and urged young men not to register. She told audiences in 1962 that the US was as much to blame for the Cuban missile crisis as Cuba and the USSR. She refused to hear any criticism of the pope, though she sparred with American bishops and priests who lived in well-appointed rectories while tolerating racial segregation in their parishes. Dorothy Day is the exceptional biography of a dedicated modern-day pacifist, an outspoken advocate for the poor, and a lifelong anarchist. This definitive and insightful account is “a monumental exploration of the life, legacy, and spirituality of the Catholic activist” (Spirituality & Practice).