Dora Wordsworth was the only surviving daughter of William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....

 (1770-1850), major Romantic poet and British Poet Laureate

Poet Laureate

A poet laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for state occasions and other government events...

. Her babyhood inspired Wordsworth to write the beautiful "Address To My Infant Daughter" in her honour. As an adult, she is further immortalised by him in the 1828 poem "The Triad", along with Edith Southey, a childhood friend of her aunt Dorothy Wordsworth

Dorothy Wordsworth

Dorothy Mae Ann Wordsworth was an English author, poet and diarist. She was the sister of the Romantic poet William Wordsworth, and the two were close for all of their lives...

, and Sara Coleridge

Sara Coleridge

Sara Coleridge was an English author and translator. She was the fourth child and only daughter of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his wife Sarah Fricker.-Early life:...

, daughter of the poet. In 1843, at the age of 39 Dora Wordsworth married Edward Quillinan

Edward Quillinan

Edward Quillinan was an English poet who was a son-in-law and defender of William Wordsworth and a translator of Portuguese poetry.-Early life:...

, against her father's wishes. Throughout her life, she formed intense romantic attachments to both genders, the most significant being her friendship with Maria Jane Jewsbury. Another close friend was Maria Kinnaird

Maria Kinnaird

Maria Kinnaird was born on St. Vincent, but was orphaned by a volcanic eruption and she was adopted by the politician, Conversation Sharp. She was the heiress of her adopted father and she has been described as a accomplished, attractive, and intelligent woman...

, adoptive daughter of Richard "Conversation" Sharp

Richard Sharp (politician)

Richard Sharp, FRS, FSA , also known as "Conversation" Sharp, was a hat-maker, banker, merchant, poet, critic, British politician, but above all - doyen of the conversationalists.-Family background:...

 and the future wife of Thomas Drummond

Thomas Drummond

Captain Thomas Drummond , from Edinburgh, Scotland, was an army officer, civil engineer and senior public official. Drummond used the Drummond light which was employed in the trigonometrical survey of Great Britain and Ireland. He is sometimes mistakenly given credit for the invention of limelight,...

. Dora and Maria were lifelong friends from teenage and some of their fascinating correspondence has survived

Described by her aunt and namesake Dorothy Wordsworth as "at times very beautiful", Dora was devoted to her father and a significant influence on his poetry. Their relationship was particularly close, with Coleridge's son Hartley describing how she "almost adored" him in an 1830 letter.
(Adore: To worship as a deity, to pay divine honours to.)
However, Dora also had literary abilities of her own, publishing a travel journal. Sara Coleridge complained after Dora's death that her father's demands on her "frustrated a real talent".

Dora Wordsworth died of tuberculosis at her parents' home, and is buried in the graveyard of St Oswald's Church, Grasmere

Grasmere

Grasmere is a village, and popular tourist destination, in the centre of the English Lake District. It takes its name from the adjacent lake, and is associated with the Lake Poets...

, Cumbria

Cumbria

Cumbria , is a non-metropolitan county in North West England. The county and Cumbria County Council, its local authority, came into existence in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972. Cumbria's largest settlement and county town is Carlisle. It consists of six districts, and in...

 along with her parents and siblings, aunt Sarah Hutchinson and Hartley Coleridge

Hartley Coleridge

David Hartley Coleridge was an English poet, biographer, essayist, and teacher. He was the eldest son of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. His sister Sara Coleridge was a poet and translator, and his brother Derwent Coleridge was a distinguished scholar and author...

, son of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...

. After her death, her distraught father (who had already lost several of his children to illness), planted hundreds of daffodils in her memory in a field beside St Mary's Church, Rydal

Rydal, Cumbria

Rydal is an English village located in the shire county of Cumbria, which is in North West England. Historically within Westmorland, the village of Rydal is situated on the A591 road....

. The site, Dora's Field, where daffodils are still cultivated today is now owned by the National Trust

National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty

The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, usually known as the National Trust, is a conservation organisation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland...

.