She did not seek relief for herself by marrying, though according to De Quincey she had several offers, one, he says, from Hazlitt. That could never have succeeded —the delicate, sensitive Dorothy with that awkward, disagreeable fellow who had a permanent chip on his shoulder.

The work is based on a photograph of Jessie Binns, of Greysouthen, near Cockermouth, Senior Programming and Partnership Officer at the National Trust in the North Lakes. She posed in period dress, drawing on a painting of Dorothy that is part of the Wordsworth collection at Rydal Mount where Dorothy died aged 83.

For about the last 50 years of his life Wordsworth lived in the Lake District in the north of England, first in Grasmere. There in 1802 he married his cousin Mary Hutchinson. The family moved to Rydal Mount, near Ambleside, in 1813. Gradually the poet won public favor, and critics finally agreed with his ideas.