This unabashedly sentimental biography, published some thirty-one years after Dorothy’s death in 1855, presents her as an exemplary Victorian woman: intelligent, observant, beautiful, compassionate, and forever devoted to her older brother William, supplying his poetic genius with detailed descriptions of natural scenery and remaining his inseparable companion. Though Dorothy fell seriously ill in 1829, becoming an invalid and suffering from an intensifying dementia to the end of her life, she could still be heard reciting lines from her brother William’s poems.
