All Before Me: A Search for Belonging in Wordsworth’s Lake District

by Esther Rutter

In her early twenties, Esther Rutter suffered an acute mental breakdown while teaching English in Japan. Sectioned and held in a Japanese psychiatric institution until she could be flown home under escort, her recovery only began when she came to live and work in the Lake District at Dove Cottage, the home of William and Dorothy Wordsworth. Here, amid the beauty of the mountainous landscape and close to the extraordinary legacy of the Wordsworths, Esther began to heal. Like Dorothy and William before her, whose search for Dove Cottage was borne out of the dislocation they experienced during their childhood, Esther realised that she was looking for a place to feel at home, and most like herself. In the Wordsworths' lives and writings, she discovered an approach to understanding herself as sophisticated as the psychoanalysis of Freud that followed a century a desire to 'see into the life of things' through personal reflection, and the belief that the experiences of ordinary people are intrinsically worthwhile and important. And in the community of fellow interns, colleagues, poets and villagers, she made lifelong bonds of friendship, and finally, love. All Before Me is a moving and absorbing account of the struggle to know oneself on the journey into adulthood, intertwined with the stories of the Wordsworth siblings at Dove Cottage. In the beautiful hamlet of Town End, where a cultural epoch was borne that would forever shape the way we experience the world, Esther found the spirit of place to sustain and anchor her, and make possible all that lay before her.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Nature, Biography

352 pages, Hardcover

First published March 7, 2024

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful blend of past, future and hope set in beautiful Cumbria my spiritual home.

[Ruth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alice bought me this book and it was a perfectly judged balance between personal story of healing after a serious breakdown, a description of a year as an intern at Dove Cottage and a retelling of Wordsworth's life to put into context his profound sense of home coming and attachment to the Lake District and in particular Grasmere and his beloved Dove Cottage. It is not though a dry didactic book at all.....it reads at times like a coming of age story, at times like poetry and at times like listening to someone tell you all sorts of anecdotes about the Lake District and people who have loved it as much as Wordsworth and the author have and there is a real sense of personal connection to those people and hence Dove Cottage itself. Of course I am slightly biased. My childhood was spent coming and going to the Lake District on holiday and climbing helm crag each time! And the first night of our honeymoon was spent walking around Rydal Water and staying at Lancrig ......a small vegetarian hotel nestling under t.he fells in Grasmere. It remains a very special place. But for anyone with a love of poetry and of Wordsworth or a love of the hills or countryside this book might really evoke some very powerful emotions

[Sheena · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have a particular fondness for Grasmere so was drawn to reading this book. I have stayed there every autumn for the last few years. Amazingly even though Dove Cottage is at the bottom of the hill from where we stay I have never visited. This year I will remedy this oversight. However we do visit Tweedies. This pub is a must for a cosy pint of beer when it is raining outside and I expect sampling it's wares will be high on the agenda again this time round. I found the book reasonably interesting and was pleased The Lake District was instrumental in healing the author's mental health.

[Penny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Several tales in one book - the author's breakdown and mental health struggles mixed in with a history of the Wordsworth Trust and a Lake District biography of the Wordsworths at Dove Cottage.
Well written but a bit disjointed.
The personal sections are the best written and strongest parts.
The biographical details about William and Dorothy have a completely different style and read more like an A level English essay.
Good but not great.

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found Esther's writing in this book compelling and full of life affirming moments. I found it to be a book about love. Love for another human being grounded in love for a place and the natural landscape within it and for what we call home. Love for poetry, too, was a strong theme throughout but overall it is a prose poem to the wonderful feeling that all these loves conjoined can give us in a single moment of pure joy.

[Felicity · Rating 3 out of 5]

Trauma and recovery memoirs rarely feature on my reading list, but I succeeded in finishing Esther Rutter's fluent narrative in a single sitting, albeit because the train in which I was sitting had broken down. However inspiring, the account of her mental illness and subsequent nature, nurture and poetry cure -- effectively Rutter's own Biographia Literaria -- proved less compelling than the poetic sources. Her reference to Wordsworth's contrasting experiences of Grasmere and Goslar, coincidental sites of my own more youthful delusions, invites a salutary reminder that poets may also be woefully misled. Readers who do not share an affinity with the Lake Poets' Lyrical Ballads, or indeed with Dorothy's Diary, may respond more favourably than I to Rutter's largely therapeutic use of her sources. Some have already expressed their enthusiasm. While I don't regret reading 'All Before Me', I was glad to leave it all behind me.

[happylittlebirdy · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.75 stars

[Duncan · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of those wonderful encapsulations of a formative time in someone’s life.

[Torz E · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I've read in a long time. It met me just when I needed it to.
With bonus folklore vibes for Taylor Swift fans of "the lakes"

[Madeleine · Rating 1 out of 5]

Padded, cloying, trite