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Lucy Newlyn's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Lucy Newlyn recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Lucy Newlyn's favorite book recommendations of all time.

1

Dorothy Wordsworth, Writer

Recommended by Lucy Newlyn, and 1 others.

Lucy NewlynDorothy Wordsworth: Wonders of the Everyday is an exhibition catalogue. It was written to accompany an exhibition which ran at the Wordsworth Museum in Grasmere. The exhibition focused on Dorothy’s life, using contemporary watercolours, artefacts, manuscripts, and selections from her writings. Pamela Woof, who edited the Alfoxden and Grasmere Journals, was very well equipped as a scholar to... (Source)

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2
Over a dramatic six-month period in 1802, William Wordsworth, S.T. Coleridge, Wordsworth's sister Dorothy, and the two Hutchinson sisters Sara and Mary formed a close-knit group whose members saw or wrote to one another constantly. Coleridge, whose marriage was collapsing, was in love with Sara, and Wordsworth was about to be married to Mary, who would be moving in beside Dorothy in their Grasmere cottage. Throughout this extraordinary period both poets worked on some of their finest and most familiar poems, Coleridge's Dejection: An Ode and Wordsworth's Immortality Ode. In this fascinating... more
Recommended by Lucy Newlyn, and 1 others.

Lucy NewlynThe friendship between William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge was at its most intense during their year in Somerset, from 1797 to 1798. But John Worthen chooses to concentrate on 1802. During that year the friendship was under considerable strain, because Coleridge was having terrible problems with his marriage and was in love with Sara Hutchinson, Mary’s sister. Worthen’s book... (Source)

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3

The Grasmere and Alfoxden Journals

Dorothy Wordsworth's journals are a unique record of her life with her brother William, at the time when he was at the height of his poetic powers. Invaluable for the insight they give into the daily life of the poet and his friendship with Coleridge, they are also remarkable for their spontaneity and immediacy, and for the vivid descriptions of people, places, and incidents that inspired some of Wordsworth's best-loved poems. The Grasmere Journal was begun at Dove Cottage in May 1800 and kept for three years. Dorothy notes the walks and the weather, the friends, country neighbors... more
Recommended by Lucy Newlyn, and 1 others.

Lucy NewlynThe Grasmere Journal, written by Dorothy between 1800 and 1803, covers the most formative and important years in the Lake District, after William and Dorothy settled in a small house (now known as Dove Cottage) by the side of Grasmere lake. They were cohabiting, companionably and very happily, in the period leading up to William’s marriage to Mary Hutchinson. The journal records many details of... (Source)

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4

The Major Works

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) has long been one of the best-known and best-loved English poets. The Lyrical Ballads, written with Coleridge, is a landmark in the history of English romantic poetry. His celebration of nature and of the beauty and poetry in the commonplace embody a unified and coherent vision that was profoundly innovative.

This volume presents the poems in their order of composition and in their earliest completed state, enabling the reader to trace Wordsworth's poetic development and to share the experience of his contemporaries. It includes a large...
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Recommended by Gillen D'Arcy Wood, Lucy Newlyn, and 2 others.

Lucy NewlynStephen Gill’s edition gives us William Wordsworth’s career from the beginning right the way through, and it’s a long career – he started writing very young. Gill gives it to us collection by collection, so we see Wordsworth emerging at publication moments. The poems are selected with considerable care, and the book gives a very even account of Wordsworth’s whole life as a writer – prose as well... (Source)

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5
“A manifesto of sorts for anyone who makes art [and] cares for it.” —Zadie Smith

“The best book I know of for talented but unacknowledged creators. . . . A masterpiece.” —Margaret Atwood

“No one who is invested in any kind of art . . . can read The Gift and remain unchanged.” —David Foster Wallace


By now a modern classic, The Gift is a brilliantly orchestrated defense of the value of creativity and of its importance in a culture increasingly governed by money and overrun with commodities. This book is even more necessary today than when it first...
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Austin KleonI’m not really sure what to say about this book. It just kind of re-affirmed a lot of what I’ve been thinking about making art: that it’s important for me to have a day job, so I can separate work from play, and that the more generous you are with your audience (through blogging, teaching, sharing, etc.) the better off you’ll be as an artist—spiritually and financially. (Source)

Armina SirbuIt's amazing to realize how gifts have impacted and influenced the human race. (Source)

Lucy NewlynThe Gift is not a book about Wordsworth. The subtitle of the UK edition is “How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World”. Lewis Hyde looks at creativity not as the route to celebrity, but rather in terms of a “gift economy”. He plays off the great Marcel Mauss’s 1923 anthropological essay The Gift, building on Mauss’s idea that there’s no such thing as a free gift – when you give something, you... (Source)

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