William Wordsworth, Resolution and Independence

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The Leech-Gatherer from Wordsworth’s 1807 poem “Resolution and Independence” stands among the forest girl in “We Are Seven”, the Solitary in

The Excursion

, Lucy of the “Lucy” poems, and Martha Ray in “The Thorn” as the most iconic figures in Wordsworth’s poetry. In some respects a realistic counterpart to Coleridge’s fantastic Ancient Mariner, the Leech-Gatherer is based on a real person from an actual encounter Wordsworth and his sister had in October of 1800. Dorothy Wordsworth’s journal records that she and Wordsworth met a beggar who formerly had been a leech-gatherer but who had been driven to poverty by the scarcity of leeches, which people then used as a means of blood-letting in the treatment of various ailments. Dorothy writes,

we met an old man almost

3958 words

Citation: Robinson, Daniel. "Resolution and Independence". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 17 October 2011; last revised 18 June 2012. [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=34186, accessed 19 March 2024.]

34186 Resolution and Independence 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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