Undersong

by Kathleen Winter

“A stunning, spellbinding, poetic triumph." — Toronto Star

From Giller-shortlisted author Kathleen Winter (author of the bestseller Annabel ): A stunning novel reimagining the lost years of misunderstood Romantic Era genius Dorothy Wordsworth.

When young James Dixon, a local jack-of-all-trades recently returned from the Battle of Waterloo, meets Dorothy Wordsworth, he quickly realizes he’s never met another woman anything like her. In her early thirties, Dorothy has already lived a wildly unconventional life. And as her famous brother William Wordsworth’s confidante and creative collaborator—considered by some in their circle to be the secret to his success as a poet—she has carved a seemingly idyllic existence for herself, alongside William and his wife, in England’s Lake District.

One day, Dixon is approached by William to do some handiwork around the Wordsworth estate. Soon he takes on more and more chores—and quickly understands that his real, unspoken responsibility is to keep an eye on Dorothy, who is growing frail and melancholic. The unlikely pair of misfits form a sympathetic bond despite the troubling chasm in social class between them, and soon Dixon is the quiet witness to everyday life in Dorothy’s family and glittering social circle, which includes literary legends Samuel Coleridge, Thomas de Quincy, William Blake, and Charles and Mary Lamb.

Through the fictional James Dixon—a gentle but troubled soul, more attuned to the wonders of the garden he faithfully tends than to vexing worldly matters—we step inside the Wordsworth family, witnessing their dramatic emotional and artistic struggles, hidden traumas, private betrayals and triumphs. At the same time, Winter slowly weaves a darker, complex “undersong” through the novel, one as earthy and elemental as flower and tree, gradually revealing the pattern of Dorothy's rich, hidden life—that of a woman determined, against all odds, to exist on her own terms. But the unsettling effects of Dorothy’s tragically repressed brilliance take their toll, and when at last her true voice sings out, it is so searing and bright that Dixon must make an impossible choice.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Canada, Poetry, Audiobook, Literary Fiction, Family

320 pages, Hardcover

First published August 17, 2021

About the author

Kathleen Winter's novel Annabel was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Governor General's Literary Award, the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, the Orange Prize, and numerous other awards. Her Arctic memoir Boundless was shortlisted for Canada's Weston and Taylor non-fiction prizes, and her last novel Lost in September was longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award and was a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award. Born in the UK, Winter now lives in Montreal after many years in Newfoundland.

Reviews

[Krista · Rating 3 out of 5]

What can be more ordinary than my voice — wind through my branches, sap gurgling in my wood? Trees cover the earth, as common as stones! Inventors and poets scour their own minds for sparks of life, but Rotha perceived vitality in natural bodies. She knew life was a force no inventor can create, and even now her knowledge remains visible yet unseen, just as the word real indwells the word realm. But invention! Progress! Machines to counterfeit myself, Sycamore, and other trees. Bee-sized apparitions to mimic bee work, humming and whirring ever faster, louder than Rotha’s undersong of wind in wood, of fluttering wing, of hue atremble in corolla. Common life will become uncommon. The ordinary will slip underground from whence it once flourished. Not dead, you understand, but in waiting.

Undersong is a fictionalised biography of Dorothy “Rotha” Wordsworth — sister of, and evidently, mostly uncredited collaborator with the poet William Wordsworth (apparently performing the same function for family friend Samuel Coleridge) — and while I do tend to like these kinds of books that right the historical record by bringing women out of the shadows, I had a hard time figuring out just how much of this was meant to be accurate. Narrated by a fictional handyman, James Dixon, who came to serve the family when he was seventeen and Rotha forty-five, author Kathleen Winter also includes passages from the point-of-view of a Sycamore tree (as I opened with) and passages from Rotha’s diaries (which are more impressions of nature than a record of her life). As even Wikipedia points out the famous lines that William Wordsworth lifted from his sister’s writings for his own use, this seems an important story to tell, but ultimately, I felt I knew James Dixon very well by the end of this, but Rotha? Not so much. Still, an intriguing story, and with Winter's reliably excellent writing on display, this was a very fine read. Rounding down to three stars. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)

As Undersong opens, Rotha has just passed away at eighty-three and her loyal servant James begins to tell the story of their nearly four decade relationship:

My mam, says James, always told me this: When someone you care about dies, you can tell their story to the bees and they’ll keep it, like. Even if everyone else forgets. Bees’ll hold onto it for you, then once you’re dead yourself they’ll scatter it abroad with the pollen so the world never really forgets. That person stays alive and the world hasn’t lost them, and you haven’t lost them either. What about it? Do ye reckon Mam’s right? He reaches his hand forth and five bees alight on it. Only in our world does James possess anything now. So we denizens of the garden do what we always do for those who acknowledge us the way he and Rotha have done. We eloquesce in the realm of light, wind and water — and with our earthen bodies we listen.

James remembers first being struck by the sight of Rotha and her strange crow of a brother when he was a little boy — in all the years since I saw Rotha Wordsworth that very first time when I was five, I never met the glimmer in anyone except her — and goes on to describe how, recently returned from the Battle of Waterloo, he was hired by William as a gardener/handyman/someone to keep an eye on the melancholy Rotha so that William can be free to write. James and Rotha go on rambles through the Lake District (although she would rather be with her beloved brother as in the old days), and after Rotha writes her impressions of what she sees in her diaries, William would have James (with Rotha’s permission) read passages out for him to assess and borrow from:

— Nothing in the woods is whiter than the snow of blackberry blossoms on the dark green leaves, & the leaves are dry as bones under the few raindrops that sit on them like tiny crystal balls —

Keep going. Write that one down.

— & water sparkles among the reeds, its voice a flute in the undersong of wind, thrush and reed — lights in the grass — & the lake glimmers through the lilac leaves — skeletons of the lilac flowers stand on the treetop, brittly swaying — a strong wind blew the lilac leaves so they became folded hearts — half-hearted, & it tore the skin off the lake revealing glittering silver blood — like ripped metal — the sound of the wind went hollowly around the hills like a soft-headed stick scribing a spiral on cymbals—

Yes, write it down! We’ll have all that.

(According to James’ account, Rotha explains that William is terribly near-sighted and has a poor sense of smell so she saw it as her duty to experience the world of the senses on his behalf.) As I said above, we learn a lot about James’ life and family (including the younger sister who ruined her body working at the mills in Manchester since childhood), and as devoted and selfless as he is in service to the Wordsworths, Winter continually underlines the class divide that prevents Rotha and William from seeing or treating James as a person; if this is meant to be a proper biography of Rotha, it doesn’t provoke much empathy for her. Near the end of Undersong, James fulfills a promise to Rotha: to destroy the private “red diaries” which recorded her actual feelings, but which William was decidedly uninterested in reading. James recites from these secret diaries to the bees:

The first shock was realizing I was no longer one of the boys. The second shock came after Wm & Sam stopped including me, & after Quincey also found a wife — what is it about their finding wives that made me obsolete? The second shock was that, No, I had never been one of them. Not in our youth & not in our age. What had I been? They loved my thoughts, it is true, but did not hear me utter them. Rather, they imagined that my ideas had flown to them from the same invisible wind that flows to all men, & that my ideas counted among their discoveries.

I suppose it is the remove of having Rotha’s story told by a servant and the trees that kept me from really connecting with her experience and that just makes me question Winter's intention with this format. As an overall concept, however, this was very interesting and I am happy to have learned as much as I did about the Wordsworths.

[Sharon Ouderkirk · Rating 4 out of 5]

This fictionalized account of the life of Dorothy Wordsworth is a literary gem that examines poetic inspiration, genius and madness, and the historic suppression of female creativity.
Dorothy is William Wordsworth's sister, and, like him, she revels in the beauty of nature, and writes down her thoughts. But unlike him, she has no real filter and her thoughts are often fantastic and outside of the realm of what is acceptable. William depended on her insights and observations; she was a companion in the early days, and travelled with him and Coleridge. As this novel tells it, William and Samuel grew into men, got married and lived more traditionally, leaving Dorothy to retreat into her own world.
Undersong writes an account of Dorothy's life from the perspective of the servant, James Dixon, who is tasked with watching over her. He is fascinated by her, and he understands and appreciates her unique outlook, even though he often doubts her sanity. He assists William with reviewing her journals for insights that he can use in his poetry, but apparently unlike William, he cringes at the deceit. The final part of the novel is a fictionalized diary written by Dorothy that allows a glimpse of Dorothy's secret world and raises questions about inspiration and madness.
I thought the novel was a magnificent achievement - James Dixon narrates the tale, and his voice is believable and consistent. He is telling the story of Dorothy's life to the bees, on the day of her death. (Tradition says you must tell the bees when someone dies). Most of the novel is wonderful, a poetic tribute to a woman who was a poet, although not much published.
The end section that is supposedly the diary of Dorothy is problematic in two ways: Winter aassumes Dorothy's voice for her fiction, much like William did, albeit with the different motivation of paying tribute to Dorothy. The second issue is that Dorothy's awareness of her place as a woman in the journals is totally 21st century. She knows her voice has been suppressed, and she understands that her friend Mary Lamb's madness may have been a sexist and repressive diagnosis. I understand the point of making these ideas prominent in a modern novel, but it left me curious to really hear Dorothy's true voice.
Undersong is provocative, and thoughtful, and well-written. It provokes this reader to do more research on the subject, and was a beautiful and poetic tribute to Dorothy Wordsworth.

[Doreen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel is a fictionalized account of the life of Dorothy (Rotha) Wordsworth, sister of the famous Romantic poet, William Wordsworth.

The book begins on the day of Rotha’s death. James Dixon, a gardener/handyman for the Wordsworth household, talks to the bees in the garden about Rotha whom he has known for almost 40 years. He believes that “When someone you care about dies, you can tell their story to the bees and they’ll keep it, like. Even if everyone else forgets. Bees’ll . . . scatter it abroad with the pollen so the world never really forgets.”

James is hired to do odd jobs for William, but he is also tasked with looking after Rotha whom William describes as having “sensitivities” and being “not like other women” so she “has to be handled most carefully.” William also describes her as being exuberant: “Too exuberant. Because then she flattens. After the exuberant time when everything is charged and full of a joyful energy, her sun goes out like a blown lamp. Worse than flattens.” In reality, it seems that William does not have time to spend with his sister, or does not want to do so, and James becomes his stand-in. James and Rotha spend a great deal of time together both in the garden and on walks in the Lake District and a bond forms, though James is aware that there is a class divide and he is a servant.

The book is very much a character study of Dorothy Wordsworth. She is totally attuned to nature; James describes her as hearing “a faint speech of the flowers . . . far more plainly than any speech from people.” James speaks of how “she could go in any ordinary place and she would see it exalted, like” and he knows “that one and the same thing to her were gull and grass and lake and path and her own self.” Rotha is the source of her brother’s success. She keeps journals in which she jots impressions and William uses them in his poems as if they were his; James reads Rotha’s journals to William: “The words he fished or made me gather and move from her world to his own were like pollen and nectar ye collect. We harvested his sister’s weightless and golden thoughts. He did not have anything like those in himself.” She is a lonely woman who has sacrificed much to feed William “spoonful by tiny exquisite spoonful . . . the words the world thinks are created by himself alone.” She is a fiercely intelligent woman but her brilliance is at the service of others; James says, “if anyone siphoned the spirit out of me that William drew from Rotha I might have a pain in my guts an’ all, and sore bowels and stiff legs.”

Dorothy resents how women, especially those of a certain age, are rendered invisible: “Accomplishment . . . is a woman’s word. A man has no need of this word as he fulfills it by virtue of having been born & having not yet died. . . . Accomplishment is our word & our reason for lying in agony for some time before rising, if we are able to rise at all. Accomplishment is for us inaccessible. Evasive. Always ahead. A state of being . . . that cannot exist for us as long as men stand like gnomons & define timelessness for themselves alone.”

This is not to say that Dorothy is perfect because Winter develops her into a complex person with human flaws. James thinks that “she fully listened to anything I had to say” but this proves not to be true because she never remembers that James has a sister and not a brother. He does acknowledge a certain hard-heartedness: “If she heard or saw even a glimpse of something that didn’t go with her vision of paradise in that closed-off shaded world of theirs, Rotha Wordsworth wanted it gone.” He admits that “I don’t think she wanted to hear too much of my story. She was very comforted by the fact that I was a quiet and strong person who did not demand anything in the way of attention. She hated it when people gabbed on about themselves.”

It is not only Dorothy who is developed; her brother also emerges as a round character. One can feel sympathy for him because he seems to have lost the connection to nature; “he has become hard of hearing when it came to the natural world” and he confesses to James that “the poems were leaving him.” Knowing how reliant William is on his sister, James has sympathy: “I thought how painful this must have been for him. Knowing glory was there second-hand, like.” (Of course, I was reminded of William’s tribute to his “dear, dear sister” in the third movement of his famous poem, “Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey”: “in thy voice I catch/The language of my former heart, and read/My former pleasures in the shooting lights/Of thy wild eyes.”)
Though William is reliant on Dorothy’s inspiration, he dismisses her feelings. He reads all her journals except a red diary which he ignores: “The red diary is of no use to anybody at all. It is nothing but a record of my sister’s feelings.” At one point, James questions whether William “had ever been devoted to anyone but himself.” Did he have a selfish reason for convincing his sister that she wouldn’t be able “to endure the exposure of literary fame”?

James too is an interesting character. He has been scarred by his experiences at the battle of Waterloo. A lost soul, he finds purpose in his work for the Wordsworths. He feels he has received “as much from the Wordsworths as they ever received in the way of service. Ye have to understand this was the first time in my life that somebody wanted done what I know how to do. What I want to do.” His admiration for Rotha is boundless, and though he’d like to think that they thought of him with affection and that he was part of “the little fam’ly,” he knows he is a servant. His insecurity is so evident as to break one’s heart: “I hope I’m remembering it right. I mean they felt . . . affection for me, I think? I mean I hope they did, because I certainly . . . I’ve got to stop telling ye all this for a minute for I feel a kind of – dread? A kind of horrible feeling that I might’ve been wrong – but - I don’t think I am wrong . . . Do ye think I’m wrong?” Another time, he says “of course I was only a servant. But I mean one servant can be entirely different from another servant, can’t they?” In fact, the barrier between classes is never dismantled as he admits in a moment of honesty: “And as regards my being only a servant, she’d forget. Rotha would forget that I was only the hired hand. I mean, forget is not what she . . . no she didn’t forget, but she . . . She never forgot.”

There are several references to James’ sister Penny and her situation; I think a student of psychology could examine James’ feelings of concern and guilt concerning Penny and their connection to his relationship with William’s sister. James feels guilty because he isn’t able to find Penny a position with the Wordsworths: “I was not fit. Because I didn’t find a way. A way out. A way of escape. A way of freedom. I didnt’ find it for Penny. My sister. My sister Penny. The crowd here at Rydal did not care to help me free her.” Much could be made of his comments, supposedly about others, that “even if people claim one thing – such as you shouldn’t leave your sister alone lest she come to harm – you find gaps where their plans get forgotten and they hope it won’t matter” and that “a brother can look after his younger sister only so much and then she has her own way of wanting to look after herself. And no matter how sick or poorly or wretched she seems to that brother, if she wants to get up on her own feet and see through her own eyes the older brother cannot make her see through his.”

My review is going on and on, but there is just so much to think about in this novel. As a former teacher of English literature, I loved the literary name dropping (Charles and Mary Lamb, Robert Southey, Samuel Coleridge, William Blake, and Thomas De Quincey) and references to William’s poems like “The World is Too Much with Us” and “William’s biggest poem of all, the daffodil one.” I chuckled at James’ description of Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan”: “you’d think she’d been to that place Sam Coleridge made up that begins with an X or a Z, I forget the name. Domes and that.” And how many books have passages narrated by an old sycamore tree?

So . . . an absolutely wonderful book imagining the life of an oft forgotten woman. I know I will be returning to it in the future.

Note: I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

Please check out my reader's blog (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/) and follow me on Twitter (@DCYakabuski).

[John Gushue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just a marvellous book. Knowing about the Romantic poets will doubtless help, but I don't think it is necessary to appreciate Kathleen Winters's sublime storytelling that focuses on Dorothy Wordsworth. The sister of William Wordsworth and contemporary of other poets, her own writings were not published in her lifetime but have since fascinated scholars, who could not help but notice that William helped himself to his sister's insights, thoughts and phrasing. Kathleen Winter has crafted an excellent bit of fiction that feels very real indeed.

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I gave this book 3 stars, although if I were only thinking about my personal enjoyment it would have been only 2 stars. I think the book is well written and likely a good literary novel, I just didn't like it very much. Perhaps if I knew anything about William Wordsworth (and Dorothy) for that matter, I would have liked it better. Similarly, were I more of a poetry fan, and someone who enjoyed lots of narrative (vs dialogue), I might have liked it better. And perhaps if I were in a different place in my life, I would enjoy books with lots of nuances better, but right now I just want to be reading good stories that widen my worldview or provide me with new perspectives, but that don't require as much digging to the ideas behind the words.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book in November when the light changes from golden autumn to winter blue. A time when I am outside as much as possible chasing the light and glorying in the crisp cool air and the black bare branches. In November I just want to be outside, part tree, part crow. Rotha is a wild creature, a boy whose wildness is tamed by the expectation of being a woman. Dorothy Wordsworth whose brother claims her feral writing as his own and turns it into something palatable. This is a gorgeously well written book. I'm overwhelmed with its strength and beauty. Every person who has ever felt trapped and needing to soar will relate to it. The pace is slow with minute detail, microscopic views of single leaf. I adored Undersong.

[kp · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lyrical exploration of inspiration, repression, class, and the suppression of women's intellect that underlies the artistic tradition.

[Dorothy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I very much enjoyed this fictionalised biography of the sister of famous poet William Wordsworth. Dorothy Wordsworth lived together with her brother in their home in England's Lake District. The house is still there and is visited by tourists. Dorothy was a talented writer in her own right, and often gave inspiration and practical help when he struggled to find the right words for his poetry. She was friendly with other writers who came to stay including Coleridge and de Quincy. Dorothy spent a great deal of time rambling around the countryside, either with her brother and his friends or with a manservant. She suffered from some kind of mental problem, perhaps nothing more than being a woman with intellectual skills at a time when women's lives were suppressed. She never married, and had few friends. Kathleen Winter tells her story well, drawing on existing documents and creating the fictional account of her life with authority.

[Catherine Marcotte · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fictionalized retelling of the life of Dorothy Wordsworth, I think the strongest part of the novel is its ending: an excellent chapter extracting Dorothy's voice from the glaring omissions in her and her brother William's published works.
The affected writing style and the sometimes plotless quality of the novel made it an occasional labour of love to follow along. And yet, the reader is richly forwarded, especially in the last 100 pages, with the emergence of Dorothy's proto feminism and her touching relationship to James Dixon.
A rich read full of imagery on par with that of Dorothy herself.

[Penn Kemp · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adored Undersong for its take on Dorothy Wordsworth's inner life & acute perception.

Who knew the Wordsworths could be revisited with such innovative vision!

One of my fave books of #2021 for the wonder of Kathleen Winter's writing.

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Undersong is different than anything else I have read, but I liked it very much. Kathleen has written about the sad life of Dorothy Wordsworth from the view of James Dixon, a lowly servant, one of the few people who truly understood her. It is poetic and so well written in an unconventional form. I liked that I could imagine what it would be like to be a part of the scenario in Dorothy’s and James’ relationship. I liked that parts of the Red Book are included at the end, because we were teased with this throughout the novel.

[Andraea · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although Undersong promises to give readers a unique perspective on Dorothy Wordsworth through the eyes of the fictionalized James Dixon, the novel fails to shed new light on Dorothy Wordsworth’s character. The later years of Dorothy Wordsworth’s life have often been dismissed for their lack of literary value or glossed over as a period of ill health not worth depicting on paper. Yet Canadian author Kathleen Winter, best known for her novel Annabel, which was shortlisted for numerous awards, saw the potential of portraying those years in a different light. Her novel Undersong, brings the last half of Wordsworth’s life to the forefront of her story.

The story takes an outsider-looking-in approach, utilizing James Dixon, a fictionalized version of one of the Wordsworth’s real-life servants, as the story’s main narrator. Upon learning of Dorothy’s passing, Dixon recounts his experiences working for the Wordsworths to the Sycamore tree and its resident bees. During his time at Rydal Mount, he becomes close to Dorothy or “Rotha,” as he affectionately calls her. Over the course of his employment, he desperately wants to be accepted by the family, while also realizing that they live in a world vastly different from the one he knows, creating a dissonance for James that the readers see him grapple with throughout the book. He both respects and resents the Wordsworths, wanting to be a part of their close circle while remaining apart from it. His character has excellent voice, and his reflections are often recounted in flowing prose that sometimes seem too lofty for the simple man he is supposed to be. The reader is only reminded of Dixon’s humble background because of the occasional “ye,” “aye,” and “an’” and by Dixon intentionally pointing out the ways in which he is beneath the Wordsworths. Dixon’s melodic musings meander to the point where, rather than taking a winding but direct path, the reader feels like they are going in circles. This pattern applies on the scene level as well as for the entire book. After a few chapters the book starts to feel redundant and by the end the reader has learned no more about Dorothy than they did in the first three chapters. Rather than an enjoyable romp through the mountains, the book becomes a steep uphill trek, and the reader almost feels like Rotha when she begins to lose her strength for travel, the book no longer fun to traverse.

Both Wordsworth’s and Dixon’s stories are compelling on their own but what is gained by their intersection is one-sided, highlighting Dixon’s character more than Wordsworth’s. While it is interesting to see Wordsworth through the eyes of another, it limits how far the reader can see into her inner world, and colors their image of her with Dixon’s biases rather than allowing them to form their own opinions based on their own observations. Dixon alludes to Dorothy’s traits but then fails to expound, making it hard to get a complete picture of who she is. By filtering Wordsworth’s story through James Dixon, her story again becomes secondary, something that has always plagued her work in the shadow of her brother William. In this way, Winter is not doing anything revolutionary, rather Undersong portrays the Wordsworths in the same way as most other dramatizations of their life, villainizing William as the oppressive older brother who took advantage of Dorothy’s devotion, claiming her words as his own and Dorothy as the subservient sister who only cares about herself and is completely reliant on her brother to meet her every need. This representation seems contradictory to what is contained in Dorothy’s actual journals, especially the Rydal Journals, her later journals which she kept during her days at Rydal Mount, which show an independent woman who understands that she and her brother have separate lives. The Rydal Journals demonstrate that she still values their relationship, but it is not her only source of joy. They also show how important other people, and the details of their lives were to her, whereas in Undersong, she is shown to brush off other people’s experiences, especially Dixon’s. Dixon claims his relationship with Rotha changed him, but it is unclear how. If the reader picks up Undersong with the intent to understand Dorothy Wordsworth they would be better off doing what Dixon did reading her journals.

The book’s quirks, like the omission of quotation marks or the anthropomorphized Sycamore’s narration, were more of a frustration than an enhancement. Dixon’s nonlinear telling of the story make it hard to piece together Rotha’s timeline and when things happened. The time jumps are not always clear, leaving the reader behind. The inclusion of the Red Journal seemed unnecessary since Wordsworth left numerous journals behind that Winter could have pulled from instead of creating a fictitious journal that seems far removed from what Wordsworth wrote. It felt more like a plot convenience, especially since Dixon burned the book. Winter may have pulled off the intrigue surrounding the Red Journal if she had not added its contents at the end of the novel because Wordsworth’s nephew did burn parts of her journals to keep them private and to this day they are a mystery, but Winter left nothing to the imagination of the reader which would have been a more satisfying and accurate ending. Overall, Undersong is undersung with Dorothy Wordsworth’s story remaining buried like flowers in the lichen.

[Cathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not on this year’s list of favourites. Its a disappointment as this is a Heliconian Literary Series book, and for the most part I have enjoyed their picks. I’m being generous with 3 stars. My rating is more like 2.5. I just didn’t connect with the story.

[Gabriella Schwartz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Undersong reimagines the story of Dorothy Wordsworth in the early to mid-1800s from the perspective of James Dixon, a working-class gardener and handyman who was hired by the Wordsworths during their time at Rydal Mount. Alongside a Sycamore tree, Dixon narrates Dorothy’s story—her fluctuating health and complex family relationships, especially with William—as well as his own. In caring for Dorothy, he is invited into her world, becoming enchanted by her vision and her writing. While some see Dorothy as a madwoman or an emotional nuisance, Dixon instead sees a sensitive literary genius.

Winter attempts something like a nuanced portrayal of the relationship between the Wordsworth siblings throughout the novel, but it often gets tangled up and forgotten in favor of the novel’s clear agenda.

Dorothy is the exploited means to William’s success. So says Winter’s narrator, Dixon. Dorothy's poetic sensibilities are picked clean by her brother who scrounges around her journals for lines to steal. As Dixon tells us, “We harvest his sister’s weightless and golden thoughts. He did not have anything like those in himself.” It seems William is so insistent on scavenging from Dorothy because he is entirely disconnected from nature, insensitive to the world whereas Dorothy is not.

The narratorial voice does little to complicate this picture of the siblings’ relationship given Dixon’s allegiance to Dorothy. He continues to shatter William’s reputation as the poet of nature in order to prop up Dorothy’s genius. Readers are led to believe that William’s oeuvre comes entirely from Dorothy, his poetry built upon sensations other than his own. In one especially tasteless scene, William snaps off and eats the legs of a pastry that Dorothy modeled after herself. It seems the novel can’t quite trust its readers to understand its thesis, despite dedicating multiple pages to lambasting William’s character. Hence the cannibalistic imagery, in case you didn’t quite catch that William is “consuming” his sister.

One gets the sense that Winter is entirely too focused on dismantling William’s reputation, even if it comes at the expense of historical accuracy and believability. Yes, William was concerned with the possibility that his poetic inspiration would not come as readily in his older years; and yes, William struggled with physical pains that made writing difficult—among them, deteriorating eyesight. To then claim, from these smattering of facts, that William had no poetic ability to conceive of seems an extreme jump in logic.

Of course, there is also much to be said about William and Dorothy’s writing relationship. But this relation was one of collaboration rather than plagiarism, and omitting Dorothy’s name from published works does not mean she went unacknowledged by William during the composing process. Pitting the Wordsworth siblings against one another for the sake of a powerhouse, feminist portrayal of Dorothy hardly seems the most mindful and sensitive move. It in fact feels more like a disservice to Dorothy, as it misunderstands the nature of the Wordsworth’s relationship and Dorothy's character.

As it relates to the novel's prose, Dixon’s narrative flow centers readers in a rich stream-of-conscious style which is generally a delight to read, apart from a number of passages which lean flowery and circuitous: “Ever whirring and turning. Wound, winding, sound, sighing, singing, thinking, composing, making. Their winding words. The winding thread. The terraces were the bobbins and on ‘em they wound their words.” Winter seems more preoccupied with the poetic rather than staying entirely true to the voice of her working-class narrator.

Class tension is largely confined to sections two and three of the book, then disappears. On occasion Dixon expresses his frustration over his treatment, noting twice how Dorothy cares little for his sister, Penny, who has been confined to the horrendous working conditions of 19th-century factories, leaving her spine permanently crooked. In fact, Dorothy often forgets that Dixon has a sister to begin with.

One wonders why Dixon is not allowed to break more extensively from his admiration of Dorothy as he does William, given that Dorothy tends toward treating Dixon as an undersong to herself. He must look after her needs, carry her around, and listen to her concerns and complaints even as she often fails to listen to his. Winter, through Dixon, introduces a challenge to what she perceives to be the Wordsworth’s idyllic paradise at Rydal Mount, but does little with it. It becomes, along with many other features of the book, an underdeveloped strain.

Kathleen Winter’s Undersong is certainly ambitious in its desire to reframe marginalized voices of history. Only, it sacrifices nuance in favor of skewed portrayals of Dorothy and William as well as rudimentary discussions around class. At times, the prose and characters offer fleeting glimmers of intrigue, but the novel is quick to lose that intrigue with its own imbalance. In attempting to expose the undersongs of English Romantic-era history, Undersong delivers a narrative that disservices the voices it attempts to make heard.

[Amelia · Rating 1 out of 5]

Inauthentic and libeling.

Hired on as the Wordsworths’ gardener, James bonds with Rotha over their love of natural and comprehensive souls. The novel is meant to be a candid view of Rotha’s life, following the trope of romanticized daily life that populates many historical fiction books. It frames itself as James’ reminisces to an old tree on the Wordsworths’ property, and ends with him cracking open one of Rotha’s journals so the reader can experience the world through her eyes. Combined with the tree’s perspective—which begins each section of the book—there are three points of view that are each stylistically unique.On the whole Winter’s prose is lovely, and the research she has done on the social and culture events of the time make James’ world multi-faceted and complicates his view of the Wordsworth family. Casual fans of the Romantic era will delight in the cameos of literary figures such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charles Mary Lamb, and enjoy the references to the Battle of Waterloo and the plight of factory workers’ well-being that create tension in an otherwise pastoral novel. On the whole, Undersong does well in its genre by fleshing out the world its characters live in. There is only one major flaw; none of this careful research applies to the Wordsworth’s themselves. In fact, much of their relationships, lives, and personalities are purely imagined. A reader who’s only read Wordworth’s most famous daffodil poem won’t notice how many details are committed, fabricated, or plain wrong, but the errors are many.

Shakespeare’s Sister is a popular trope, as it highlights the historical inequalities that prevented women easy access to professional spheres. The idea is that a woman equally as gifted as a man is doomed to obscurity because nobody would let her pursue her talents. Winter makes this the center of her novel; according to her, Rotha Wordsworth is true genius of the family while her brother is plagiarizing her work and discouraging her from pursuing publication. James Dixon is the true appreciator of Rotha’s genius, and expresses his distaste at how William runs his household. According to James, William isn’t truly connected with nature, nor does he have any creativity of his own. William Wordsworth, once a great poet, apparently owes the entirety of his success to Rotha’s journals. The novel is a love letter to her genius at the expense of his own, and paints Rotha’s relationship as an unhealthy, para-social one that leaves her isolated from the rest of the world. If one takes Undersong at face value, the real Dorothy Wordsworth longed to be published, but was constantly dismissed by her family.

While this makes for an interesting plot, it disregards William’s own talents of a poet and rewrites his personality into something that historically isn’t true. Dorothy and William’s relationship is well documented, and authorship had a different ring to it back then. Several of Dorothy’s poems were published alongside William’s, but the majority of her work was circulated among friends via letters, which was common at the time. She was known during her lifetime, and acting as though monetary compensation is the only “real” way to be an author shows an immaturity in Winter’s understanding of the time period. How odd, that she took the time to include the practice of selling Waterloo teeth, but didn’t explore different cultural practices of authorship for a book that revolves around that very topic.

Additionally, to sell the oppressed woman narrative, Winter has omitted the majority of the Wordsworths’ social circle; Sara Hutchinson and the rest of Dorothy’s social life are absent. The way it’s played, Dorothy had no support network aside from Mary Lamb, a mentally unwell woman who stabbed her mother to death. Additionally, none of William’s children are mentioned or seem to exist at all. Rotha’s illness, which resulted in chronic unwellness and eventual mental degradation, is also introduced decades earlier than it actually happened and omits the mental toll it took on her faculties. Winter paints a picture of a noble, longsuffering woman, and ignores the unromantic elements of Rotha’s sickness.

How can a novel be historically accurate when there are such egregious errors? It is one thing to argue that Dorothy Wordsworth was an unappreciated genius. It is another to artificially macgvyer her life to fit that narrative and market the novel as an accurate portrayal. Historical fiction has a responsibility to admit when it veers away from the truth. If Winter is determined to tell a narrative about an oppressed, overlooked female author in Britain’s Romantic era, she would be better off creating an original, completely fictional story. Her prose is good, and her lyrical style stands out. Quality-wise, her books have good bones. However, as a researcher she’s shown herself to be biased. Readers who pick up Undersong should be aware that while it is a pleasant read, it is not the novel it pretends to be. I can forgive a lot, but Winter’s attempts to rewrite the Wordsworth family to fit her own agenda is one that has spoiled the book for me completely.

[Rachel Gouff · Rating 2 out of 5]

I would give it 3-3.5 stars for enjoyability. Sadly, I would only give it 1 star for accuracy and fairness. 2 stars average.

In her 2021 novel Undersong, Kathleen Winter adds to the recently-increasing attention directed at Dorothy Wordsworth and does so with gorgeous prose that tells the story of Dorothy’s later years through the eyes of her manservant, James Dixon, and at times through the eyes(?) of a sycamore tree. This premise is compelling, as the public knows very little about Dorothy’s later years and scholars who have written on the last decades of her life have often misrepresented them. The question is: does this novel correct these misrepresentations or add to them?

Regardless of how accurate or inaccurate the biographical facts in this novel are, the book is extremely well-crafted. Recurring themes of specific natural elements—particularly those of the bees and trees that James tells Dorothy’s story to—are not only vivid and clever, but actually serve to draw out the “undersongs” and messages that make the story powerful. James Dixon, with his delightfully round-about way of describing events and his unique way of seeing the world and the people around him, is a refreshing narrator who adds a whole lot of character to the novel. Furthermore, as an impoverished handy-man, his perspective allows for interesting explorations of class dynamics.

One especially strong point of Undersong is the well-researched historical context it provides. This is one area in which even avid Dorothy Wordsworth fans will feel that their understanding is enhanced by this novel. Details about gardening, farm tools, Waterloo, and social tradition allow Dorothy’s world to be filled out and colored in the minds of readers. Another highlight is the way the author is able to take the descriptions that Dorothy’s friends and family wrote about her keen perception of nature, and breathe life into this aspect of her personality, weaving it into every aspect of her character in such a way that—for a brief instant—readers almost feel as though they have lived a bit in Dorothy’s wonderful and eccentric mind.

Unfortunately, this book—while an enjoyable read—does at least as much harm as it does good when it comes to the Wordsworth family legacy. With very little real evidence, this book purposely perpetuates the popular myth of Dorothy as a typical “mad woman in the attic” and William as her abuser and oppressor. In the absence of real Dorothy Wordsworth journals that confess any such thing, the author chose to make up a fictional journal full of secret betrayal and repressed creativity. It feels almost as if Winter fell in love with the idea of a Dorothy Wordsworth that fit Woolf’s “Shakespeare’s Sister” thought experiment before she actually got to know Dorothy. However, if she was more interested in Dorothy as a concept than in Dorothy as an actual person, she should have created a fictional character that fit the feminist themes she wanted to explore rather than libelling actual historical figures. Her baseless negative portrayal of William Wordsworth verges on unethical and is, in my opinion, inexcusable. Even the timeline of Dorothy’s illness is pretty messed up. No amount of drama and excitement added by such lies makes these falsehoods okay. Of course, taking liberties and artistic license in this genre of biographical fiction is understandable and expected, but whenever historical inaccuracies could be harmful, I believe they should be explicitly stated as such.

For a story that is obviously trying hard to give Dorothy her own voice separate from male accounts of her (an admirable goal), it is strange that it is a man instead of Dorothy herself that narrates most of the novel—and even stranger that the fictional diary plays a larger role in the story than any of Dorothy’s actual journals do. It means that, instead of having her own voice drawn out by this novel, this is just yet another example of people placing their words into Dorothy’s mouth. It is also confusing to me that, in her attempt to separate Dorothy from William, Winter felt the need to knock William down. If Dorothy cannot be elevated without William being lowered, then their sum value is still the same and Dorothy is still not seen as her own separate person.

I appreciate the aims of this novel and the lovely style in which it is written. Winter dedicated the book to Dorothy herself, which is a sweet gesture. However, even though the author’s intentions were good, the purposes of this novel would have been better accomplished by a more factual account of Dorothy’s life. I love Dorothy Wordsworth and I love that more is being written about her. I just think that her memory would be better honored by truths than by these falsehoods.

[Hailey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Undersong by Kathleen Winter review-the re-enchantment of one Wordsworth sibling
Follow along Wordsworth’s garden path and pause to admire the elegiac meditations on love, loss, and the quiet power of the natural world.

Picture Monet’s water lilies and his other vibrant gardens. Now move those bright landscapes to the quaint English Lake District. Here the garden has been curated by the poet William Wordsworth who takes all the credit for its beauty (though he did make some suggestions). But the garden itself is molded, nurtured, and cared for by the gardener and jack-of-all-trades James Dixon. It is James and Dorothy Wordsworth (Rotha) who are the ones that actually appreciate and harness the beauty of the outdoors. This is how Kathleen Winter depicts the distribution of labor amongst the Wordsworth clan. There are the people doing the grunt work, and those who receive the recognition.

Undersong marks a quieter, more introspective turn in Kathleen Winter’s career, following the broader, socially engaged narratives of her earlier works, Annabel (2010) and The Rage of Elm (2014). While those novels explored complex themes of identity, family, and societal expectations, Undersong shifts focus to the emotional and psychological landscape of an individual grappling with grief and memory. With a more meditative, fragmented structure, it represents a departure from Winter’s previous narrative-driven style, opting instead for an exploration of internal experience. This novel demonstrates Winter’s breadth, moving away from larger societal themes to explore the personal and introspective.

Undersong follows James Dixon and his life as a servant of the Wordsworths. James’s primary responsibilities are upkeep of the garden and keeping Dorothy Wordsworth (Rotha) company. This is where the focus of the novel remains, using James as a device to understand Rotha through their interactions, memories, and Rotha’s journal entries. Rather than offering a traditional plot, the novel is a reflection of James’s internal journey to understand Rotha, as she grapples with grief, memory, and the passage of time. Through fragmented encounters and quiet moments of introspection, James’s attempts to make sense of Rotha’s emotional landscape, revisiting her past relationships and the experiences that have shaped her. The landscape around Rotha becomes not just a refuge but a powerful symbol of her inner turmoil and slow path toward healing. The novel’s structure is loose and non-linear, with time often folding back on itself as James shifts between memory and present reflection, allowing for a portrait of emotional recovery that feels fragmented and nuanced.

Winter’s prose is evocative, with attention to the rhythms and textures of nature. Focusing on the external conflict of James and Rotha, Undersong uses mood and emotional depth, to capture the slow, painful process of coming to terms with loss. James has few interactions with character’s other than Rotha, which makes the novel a solitary experience that mirrors the isolation of grief. This meditative approach allows Winter to explore the subtleties of emotional healing, but the novel’s lack of forward momentum or clear resolution may frustrate some who crave more structure. The pace is deliberate and introspective, demanding patience as it replaces traditional climaxes in favor of a more atmospheric and reflective tone.

The absence of a clear narrative arc or resolution shifts the focus of the novel to the mood, which can feel disorienting or unsatisfying to those seeking a more concrete sense of direction. While Winter’s lyrical prose and emotional depth are clear, Undersong can feel like a meditation that resists resolution at times, offering instead a series of reflections that may leave readers searching for a greater sense of closure. But, for those open to its subtle rhythms and introspective focus, the novel offers a hauntingly beautiful meditation on loss, memory, and the quiet process of coming to terms with the past.

[Kailey Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Kathleen Winter’s Undersong, the character of Dorothy Wordsworth is well-versed in poetry, prose, and 21st-century feminist discourse

Dorothy Wordsworth has long been overshadowed by her brother William, the celebrated Romantic poet. Though a gifted writer and thinker in her own right, for decades, she was relegated to the role of the poet’s devoted sister, her own literary contributions underappreciated. Today, interest in Dorothy Wordsworth and her literary works has never been higher, making it fitting that Kathleen Winter chose to base Undersong on Dorothy and the Wordsworth family. Winter, whose novel Annabel was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2010, continues to examine gender and societal expectations in her new novel. Undersong highlights that Dorothy Wordsworth was more than just an acquaintance of literary greats like William Blake, Thomas De Quincey, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, as well as her own brother William; she was the true source of the revolutionary ideas about nature and sentiment that cemented William Wordsworth's legacy as a great Romantic poet.

Told from the perspective of John Dixon, Wordsworth’s gardener at Rydal Mount, we see Dorothy, nicknamed Rotha, as a woman who is tapped into the constant hum of the natural world in motion and weighed down by her heightened sensitivity. We also see William as a pragmatic, increasingly distant figure—a poet-turned-patriarch whose reliance on Dorothy’s journals for inspiration is both a source of creative energy and familial tension. What works in this novel is Winter’s dedication to giving nature a real voice. Few books capture nature's duality, portraying its awe-inspiring beauty alongside its devastating bleakness and harshness. Dixon constantly speaks to nature as a being, things like bees and sycamore trees are personified, which creates a separate world that only the truly sensitive souls can access. In the novel, Rotha and Dixon understand the sublimity of nature, but William no longer can which provides an enticing juxtaposition.

The other strong point of the novel is Winter’s choice to set the story in the mid-1800s when Dorothy and William have passed their prime. In the real life of Dorothy Wordsworth, her time spent at Rydal Mount disinterested scholars the most. Her diary entries about her observations and life were deemed unimportant compared to her written works during her time in Grasmere. Winters' choice to highlight the character of Dorothy at her most “irrelevant” time in her life was the right one. In the novel, Dorothy is a strong character, equally forceful in her later years as in her youth, and questions the reasons behind why she was often overlooked by past scholars and the public.

What doesn’t work is the sometimes heavy-handed approach to highlighting the aforementioned tension between William and his sister Dorothy. Dorothy is written as the true sage of the Lakes District, and William is a complicated figure who at times is seen less as a truly affectionate brother and more like a common thief who pilfers all the literary goodness out of Dorothy for himself until there is nothing left. At one point in the novel Winter treads on shaky ground by portraying William as an outright villain. What also didn’t work for me was the whiffs of 21st-century feminist discourse that truly clouded the latter half of the novel. When Dorothy begins to suffer illness, and fatigue, Dixon surmises that it is due to her over-reliant relationship with her brother, but the cause is later found in Dorothy’s own words that it is due to her stifled role in society due to her being a woman. This is a pretty advanced view of the state of gender and power dynamics within Western society, and while I think the real Dorothy Wordsworth was certainly bright enough to have critical thoughts about her place in the world, I’m not sure she would have identified the patriarchy as the boogeyman and the real reason that lead to the downfall of her relationships, mental health, and physical prowess.

Despite these flaws, Undersong is a remarkable exploration of a life too often relegated to the margins. Winter’s prose, particularly in passages that incorporate Dorothy’s writing, is luminous, capturing both the beauty and ferocity of the natural world Dorothy so adored. By framing Dorothy as a muse who shaped the Romantic movement, Winter not only elevates her subject but also invites readers to reconsider the narratives we construct about creative genius and collaboration.

[Henry · Rating 3 out of 5]

James Dixon, a handyman employed by the Wordsworths in real life, serves as our primary viewpoint of the goings on in Rydal Hall in Undersong, by Kathleen Winter. Dixon recounts the relationship he had with the family from the time he returned from Waterloo in 1815 until Dorothy’s death in 1855. As a piece of historical fiction, Winter uses creative license to predict the thoughts and motives of her mouthpiece, as there is little actually known about James Dixon and his opinions. His anonymity in the annals of history and his prolonged proximity to Dorothy makes him a prime candidate for exploring her life, especially in the later years where less consideration has been given to her, in general.
This premise stands out among Winter’s other works which are usually set in or about Canada; It is also Winter’s second attempt at a historical fiction novel. However, this latest publication shares many similarities to the rest of her oeuvre as it deals with themes of mental health, physical incapacity, and social gender expectations.
Perhaps the most unique element of Undersong is its structure. Most of the story is told by Dixon himself, but his passages are broken up by interjections from a resident sycamore tree who essentially bears a second witness to what Dixon is privy to with the Wordsworths. The sycamore paints Dixon as a humble and trustworthy man, respected by Nature itself, therefore deserving of our own attention. Dixon does appear to be trustworthy. Winter does a good job of capturing his humbler vernacular, though Dixon is certainly forward about what he sees about Dorothy that no one else sees. To him, they are in a world of their own. Dixon, as he is telling us the story, leaves the last section for Dorothy to explain herself, through collected thoughts and feelings she collected over decades but were seen as worthless by her brother William, unlike the Grasmere journals she made for him.
After Dorothy’s death, James Dixon starts his recollection with the first time he saw her, when he was five, and the first time he met her at the age of twelve. At this time he would begin the pattern of their relationship: him comforting Dorothy after her being rebuked by her brother. When he returns from the Battle of Waterloo, Dixon is hired by William to care for Rydal hall, with special attention to Dorothy, her needs. William tasks him with reading aloud her journals so he might extract some poetic inspiration, as he struggles to connect to any natural muse. Over the decades-long employment Dixon shares in the ups and downs of Dorothy’s health and acts as confidante to her worries.
The novel’s most compelling feature is its narrative voice. As a member of the working class, James Dixon’s language is plain, but greatly informed by the land he cares for, using colloquial expressions and ample imagery to give his reflections a lyrical quality. The lack of quotation marks make it unconventional in its use of dialogue; it is difficult at the start, but as the reader becomes accustomed to Dixon’s mode of speech and storytelling, it also becomes easier to process. His style gives him an inherent honesty that often speaks against how many scholars analyze the information about the Wordsworths and their relationship to each other. Since it is fictional in its execution, it should be taken simply as an introduction into the dynamic of Rydal Hall, and those interested in learning more should engage with the actual source material.
Little contextual information is required by the reader to understand the story, thanks to Dixon’s fresh perspective and willingness to provide additional context when he sees it necessary. Nevertheless, reading Dorothy’s Rydal Journals prior to or in tandem with Undersong would certainly enhance the experience and will resonate with the themes and motifs sometimes only alluded to by Winter through James Dixon.

[Karen Ocana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kathleen Winters’ latest novel, is bee-centric. Or at least the many currents exploring the lives of bees – the image of the bee, the theme of making honey, the motif of the hive, the fact that James Dixon, a servant and handyman on the Wordsworth’s estate and sort of butler in their home, sees Dorothy Wordsworth as his queen – make the novel appear beehive-centric, and there is a becoming-bee that bumbles around: the idea that if Dorothy Wordsworth had been a real bee, her brother William would have been a drone, and she would have queened it. Instead William is a queen bee in drag who’s in the habit of treating her like a drone. Because, wasn’t she the real poet of the two? Weren’t her journals and diaries bursting with the pollen collected on their long rambling walks and wasn’t this the choice ingredient in the honeycomb poetry her brother fashioned out of their collective hive-mind? And why on earth was she providing him with the brilliance – the sounds, the fragrances, the images, the details, the thoughts and feelings, and he, just cobbling it together with his muscular male voice to make the finished product, and then selling it to the world as his, with his name on it, and he raking it in?

Sure, there’s more to it. For one, there’s the sycamore, a magnificent tree according to Dixon, where the bees hide and live and produce and hibernate, the tree that gives and hears and nourishes. (There’s more than an unintentional whiff of Richard Powers’s Overstory in this Undersong, because it was the Romantics who in European literature resurrected the idea that Nature is a Kingdom, a Paradise on Earth and each of its tiniest parts naturally divine, divinely natural.)

[Jocular aside: If literature is honey, it’s controlled by a queen bee but told by a queer drone reading from the Red Diaries at the foot of a sycamore – Acer pseudoplatanus would be the species found in the British Lakes District where the action takes place and the narrative ravels and unravels with high Romantic drama.]

For another thing, Undersong is fiction, and Winters’s writing unabashedly creative and recreative, subjective and intersubjective, so don’t fall into the trap of thinking that what’s written here is what really happened. Sure, it’s tempting. That’s the beauty of fiction. And as an author combing and teasing her way through Wordsworth’s journals and through the biographies and archives and the poems, Winters would operate like a synthetic bee synthesizing the honey of her Undersong from hundreds of flowers, producing a rival – a story mind, a plethora of stories stitched together, rivaling in their melancholic sweetness and in their naturally narcotic power the “real thing.”

This novel is an artful quasi-operatic collage of voices. (Is it a stretch to call it a Romantic novel?) (It would take me two days to answer that one.) It’s about a Romantic bunch of writers, the original British Romantic poets. It’s serious and playful, boisterous and rumourous, villanous and queer, heart-wrenching and arabesque, real and realer than real. Studded with entries from Dorothy Wordsworth’s journals. Woven together and often highlighting the point of view and voice of the common, but really uncommon, the rare man of native intelligence who so understands – in the literal sense of the word – who stands under Dorothy Wordsworth, worships and nurtures her and, sings her swan song to the four winds and your ears.

[Maya Hoeft · Rating 1 out of 5]

The prosaic and lyrical style is, at times, more of a burden then a delight, as Winter seems to prioritize the way her characters inner monologue is written rather than what they are actually saying. For those who are here only for the prose, this might be fine, but for those who want anything more interesting than flowery language, the story itself tends to get lost in the weeds. The sheer lack of any real plot points may be an intentional choice, however, to mirror the monotony of Dorothy’s Rydal Journals, but there is a reason why her later journals don’t garner as much attention as her earlier writings, and this novel emulates that same dullness, pain, and occasional neglect that Dorothy herself seemed to have experienced.
Dorothy is painted as the true literary genius, the mastermind behind her brother’s poetry (which is canonically false, Wordsworth wrote his own poetry and anyone whose done a lick of research would know this), since apparently, he is lacking in most of his five senses. Most readers will have no choice but to believe Winter in her use of the Shakespeare’s Sister trope, which is compelling, but totally false. Being a work of fiction and not a biography, the author took creative liberties with events and characters, and taking into account how sparse the Rydal Journals are in themselves; one would have to fill in some of the gaps to create a character out of Dorothy Wordsworth. However writing your own version of the Rydal journals seems flagrantly unethical when Winters praises them so much in interviews, yet doesn't seem to find them interesting or poetic enough to include in the book and instead invents a totally new version of them.
The question then becomes: how much of this story is actually about Dorothy Wordsworth? The story is written from the perspective of a much younger manservant who may or may not be just a little bit in love with Dorothy, his invalid charge. Though the novel follows her, we hardly see her own perspective or views. Winter places brief interjection at the beginning of each section from a sycamore tree on the Wordsworth property, but we never hear Dorothy’s actual thoughts. This may well be intentional, as Dorothy was a disabled, unmarried woman, and wouldn’t have had a voice in her own time, but chronically ill older women are already so erased today, that at times the reader craves to hear from Dorothy herself, rather than the coddling POV of her servant, in order to better understand her themselves, instead of just what everyone else feels towards her. Is Winter trying to mimic what Dorothy’s lived experience could have been in doing this? With the limited perspective provided of Dorothy, it certainly seems possible, but what would be more impactful? Mimicking Dorothy’s lived experience, or providing us with greater insight into her perspective?
Though written with poetic prose that seems to want to mimic Dorothy’s own style, Undersong is underwhelming and forgettable, and leaves the reader unsure of how much is fact and how much is fiction. We are given a compelling narrator, but a somewhat distant Dorothy Wordsworth, filling in some blanks, but leaving others in the narrative of her life.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had no idea what this book was about when a friend lent it to me. So happy I was reading it on International Women's Day but only appreciated the force of the book until the end. The end packs quite a punch!

It is a novel of historical fiction based on the life of Dorothy "Rotha" Wordsworth, yes sister of William Wordsworth.

The narrator is fictional, James Dixon, hired at age 17 to assist William Wordsworth with his gardening as well as to watch out for his sister, Dorothy. The novel focuses for the most part on how James Dixon comes to know and appreciate Dorothy, until the ends when we hear directly from Dorothy about her experience of her life with all its clarity and wisdom.

Knowing really nothing about William and Dorothy Wordsworth's lives, about three-quarters of the way through I looked them up on Wikipedia mostly to track Dorothy's age when major events took place in her life and to relate age to the parts of the novel. It really helped to do this. The main action takes place between 1804 and 1855 in Rydal Mount, in the Lake District of England, the last home of the Wordsworth's.

The frame of the novel is James Dixon, in his mid fifties, sitting in the Wordsworth's garden the day of Dorothy's death at age 83 and talking to the bees that live in a sycamore tree in the garden. He had worked the garden since age 17 and had quite a history with it, the bees and Dorothy's affinity with nature.

Brilliantly written to show the relationship as writers of William Wordsworth, his friend Samuel Coleridge and his sister Dorothy Wordsworth. They along with James Dixon, Mary Hutchinson Wordsworth and Mary Lamb are the main characters in the novel. We learn through the main part of the book how the men, William and Samuel, depend on Dorothy for their writing content and passion but don't acknowledge her at all. We learn about Dorothy the journalist who documents her experiences of nature and shares those journals with her family and friends. But she keeps a red journal about her feelings that her brother discounts and she asks others not to read.

The ending is the reading of the red journal by James Dixon to the bees and the garden. And it is the content of the red journal that is so powerful and shows us the real Dorothy in all her clarity of vision and insight. Wow!

It is a sad novel because all through we know how Dorothy is exploited by her brother and misunderstood by her family. We follow her life to the end. The exploitation is really hard. But the ending is so powerful I treasure it!

Structurally the novel is divided into sections and chapters as such:
Section 1 Where the bee sucks, there suck I
One
Two
Three
Four
Section 2 In a cowslip’s bell I lie
Five
Six
Seven
Section 3 There I couch when owls do cry
Eight
Nine
Ten
Section 4 On the bat’s back I do fly
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Section 5 After summer merrily
Fifteen
Sixteen
Section 6 The Red Diary
X

So glad I read this book. The Red Diary is so powerful!

[Richard Cabana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Undersong – A Triumphal retelling of Dorothy Wordsworth’s Romantic legacy
Kathleen Winter’s novel entitled Undersong (Penguin, Random House) is a beautiful tale which is based on the life of Dorothy Wordsworth, the sister and muse of poet Laureate William Wordsworth. The novel lovingly pays tribute to Dorothy and her gift of experiencing nature innately, and how the creative output which she captured in diaries would fuel the literary fires of William’s poetry.
The story opens up on the morning of her death, and the first narrator we encounter is an ancient Sycamore tree who has seen the lives unfold of both Dorothy, who’s point of view we get to last - and James Dixon, her faithful gardener and general servant to both Wordsworths. James recounts his life’s journey and that of his mistress to a hive of bees who live in the tree, trusting their collective memory will carry on with the tale of his mistress.
Dixon is young yet already world weary when he takes employment with the Wordsworths as a gardener and handyman, who would be given special charge of William’s sister Dorothy. She possesses a supernatural communion to the world around her, yet is often stripped bare by the onslaught of this primal connection, leaving her defenseless.
Through Dixon the reader gets a glimpse of the horrors of war, the abject hopelessness of workhouses which evolved from the rapid disenfranchising of rural farming and the inhuman treatment of child labor as experienced by his sister Penny whose life was spent far too young.
Kathleen Winter lovingly imbues her characters with human traits and flaws which bring them to life, and through their thoughts, broken dreams and aspirations, she recreates the early 19th century world of Romanticism and the major milestones of civilization in Europe which gave birth to this brief, but treasured period in literature. Her recreation of the nature surrounding Rydal Mount, the sanctuary where the majority of the novel takes place, and the rich texture she imbues in her descriptions of all natural things create a feeling of nostalgia for a world which as the novel hints at, will soon be changed forever through the dawn of railroad travel, the apex of industrialization.
The final chapters take the reader deeper into a world of melancholia, with Dorothy’s senses being harvested by her brother for his poetry and her own written word finding no outlet. As Dixon reads out loud Dorothy’s private red diaries, it becomes apparent how much William owes his success to his sister’s uncanny connection to nature and her gift for writing down her musings so eloquently. We are also given a glimpse into the terrible cost to Dorothy’s own well-being when William siphoned her observations about the world around her, with total disregard to the import of her feelings.

[Jill MacLean · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wonder, having read Kathleen Winter's "Undersong," what Dorothy Wordsworth would have made of me writing a review that is, at least partly, about her. Not much, I suspect. Goodreads postings for increased traffic and publicity? Even, perhaps, for eventual financial gain? Such aims, she would conclude, are too similar to her brother William's: I have the world too much with me: gold obliterates the undersong of leaves and birds, wind and rippling water.
Dorothy's world was very much with me as I savoured this wonderfully engaging novel. Winter's choice of James Dixon, a (fictional) handyman who worked for the Wordsworth family for nearly forty years, was inspired, as was the way this complicated, capable, self-doubting man emerged from the page. He is the lowest of the low, well-acquainted with the workhouse. Yet he is also heir to his mother's second sight and consequently understands (as William does not) how Dorothy can become one with a rose petal, a stratum of rock, a blackberry's multi-mirrored sweetness. To James, she is "a dark slip of night shot with starlight," no more able to enter the tame world than he could enter the world of privilege. But despite James's care of her and his feelings towards her, he maintains the privacy of his own small hut; and he subdues rage that all three Wordsworths remain willfully ignorant of the suffering caused by land enclosure, brutal lead mines and horrific cloth mills. Dorothy, in particular, will not allow the harsh reality of beggars and mills to disturb her paradisiacal home: one serpent there is more than enough.
On the day she dies, in 1855, James tells her story to the bees who shelter in the old sycamore, whose honeycombs are stolen from them as Dorothy's words have been stolen from her (her brother William does not come off well in Winter's novel).
Complexity of characterization enriches the whole narrative. From beginning to end, I was spellbound by this book, its pitch-perfect voice, its gorgeous prose and, yes, its undersong.

[Gail Barrington · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful and original tale about the famous poet's less well known sister, Dorothy Wordsworth and her relationships with the men in her life, her genius brother William, Samuel Coleridge, and even William Blake. The suspicion has always been that Dorothy wrote a lot of her brother's poetry and in this version, he took her ideas and turned them into verse, sometimes amounting to downright theft with no thought for her sensibilities. There is, however, another man in her life, the gardener, James Dixon, much younger, a different class, a returnee from the Battle of Waterloo, who comes to bear silent witness to the fierce brilliance of this unsung woman. Eventually, he acts pretty much as her keeper as she sinks into melancholy and frailty. But the gap between their social standing cannot be breached and what is certainly love on his side is unrequited.

There is also an interesting vignette of Charles and Mary Lamb, who mirror the Wordsworth's brother-sister relationship with a few amazing differences, Mary having murdered her mother in cold blood and been in the madhouse, only to be rescued and returned to society without anyone seeming to turn a hair. The insight into all these Victorian greats is not to be missed and the prose is spectacular in its beauty.

[Diane B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating account of the sibling relationship between Dorothy and William Wordsworth, told from the eyes of a faithful servant, James Dixon.

Beautifully written and quite lyrical, with chapters from bees and sycamore trees.

While a work of speculative fiction, this is based on solid research with all characters having found a place in history.

The author spent months transcribing the later journals of Dorothy Wordsworth from pdfs shared by the Wordsworth Trust, so had insights into the daily life and marginalia of the famous poet's sister.

The author says the end of the novel, based on the Dorothy's lost diary, came to her in bursts and she often had no recollection of what was written. This is the chapter her editor left untouched. Was Kathleen Winter channelling the spirit of Dorothy Wordsworth?

[Kees Kapteyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved this book as it goes along with my own philosophy of nature, wherein every living thing is sentient, even the tallest tree or the smallest mushroom. Through the character of Dorothy Wordsworth viewed through the lens of fictional character, servant/companion James Dixon, "Undersong" opens up a secret world that's all around us, hidden in plain sight. Deeply researched and thoughtful, the book totally immersed me in the world of early 19th century England and in the troubled lives of the Wordsworth family. By the time I finished the first chapter, it had me convinced that this book will be in the running for the Giller or the GG's- it's just that good. Definitely Kathleen Winter's masterstroke. It's taken its place on my 'favourites' shelf.

[Joanne Culley · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Undersong, Kathleen Winter has imagined the life of Dorothy Wordsworth, sister of William, the renowned poet, in this novel told from the point of view of a fictional faithful, admiring servant. Dorothy, nicknamed Rotha, notes her observations of nature in her journal, from the tiniest plants and flowers to the sweeping landscapes around their cottage in the English lake district, notations that are frequently borrowed by her brother who passes them off as his own in his poems. Bound by the restrictions surrounding women at that time, Rotha's desire to publish and become known in her own right is discouraged. An interesting look at these famous personages from English literature.

[April · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved the premise of this book. I was captivated by the author’s enthusiasm for this project, as seen in a writers festival event. However, despite some interesting sections, I was left waiting for it to end. The bitter tone and repetitive complaints made me disillusioned with my first poetry love, William Wordsworth, and not inclined to like Dorothy, either, despite feminist sympathies. I was disappointed with this read.