The Poet's Daughters
The Poet’s Daughters is about Dora Wordsworth and Sara Coleridge, the daughter of the poets, who were best friends and grew up the shadows of their fathers’ genius.
This is your first book, so was the process anything like you imagined it to be?
I don’t know that I had imagined how it would be, exactly. It took longer than I’d anticipated and was in some ways harder than I’d expected. (I’d thought the hard work would be producing the words, but in fact the really time-consuming parts were the research and then the editing. Both were fascinating processes, but neither was straightforward.)
Please tell us about setting up First Story.
I set First Story up at about the same time as I began thinking about the book. I was a teacher in a challenging school in London and depressed by the lack of creative opportunity and cultural engagement. Four years into my teaching career I was introduced to the writer William Fiennes who was, at that time, Writer in Residence at the American School in London – a very expensive private school. Together we plotted about bringing a similar scheme to those with the least opportunity rather than the most. William volunteered to come into my school and we ran a pilot. It was quite quickly clear to us that something magical was happening. At the end of the year, we published an anthology of student writing and celebrated the students’ success. Meanwhile we’d been setting up as a charity, raising money, recruiting schools and writers and we began in 8 schools in the following year. I went to part –time teaching and eventually stopped altogether. It was ideal because it was exciting and creative, but I was my own boss so I could (more or less) carve out time to write. We’re now in fifty schools across the country - but I do miss being in the classroom..
How much has your background in history helped you to write this book?
A great deal, I think. Simply to have a sense of faith that it is possible to immerse oneself in a period and begin to make some sense out of it. I’d never particularly studied the Romantic poets or the period so it was fairly nerve-racking nonetheless…
What made you want to tell the stories of these two daughters of fame?
Reading Wordsworth’s Prelude which I’d never done before was the first hook. That drew me into an interest in his life and I read a couple of biographies. Dora story appears in them as a footnote really, but I was intrigued. It was realising how many parallels there were between her life and Sara’s which made me think there might be a book there. They both had long secret engagements, complex relationships with their fathers, unusual family set ups and so on. And both were of more importance in their father’s posthumous reputations than has been recognised.
Please tell us about the research that was required for this book.
Lots and lots of letter and diary reading! The bulk of the archives are in either Dove Cottage in the Lake District, or Austin, Texas. Dove Cottage is a wonderful library and the people who work there are so knowledgeable. The Harry Ransom Center in Texas is chock full of the most astonishing wealth of archives, but there I so much that it’s hard to get a handle on it all. But Austin is an incredible place. I had six wonderful weeks: I’m longing to go back!
What is next for you?
I’m not certain, but I’m working on a couple of ideas and hope to have something decided soon.