Pre-Order | Awaiting Final Imagery
A Wordsworth Family Notebook is a two-part work. It comprises a Hurtwood New Original™ of the notebook itself plus an accompanying volume by Dr Ruth Abbott of St John’s College, Cambridge, transcribing the handwritten entries of William Wordsworth, his sister Dorothy and his wife Mary. All three wrote in it, and their hands run together on the page – Dorothy and Mary were collaborators in the work, not copyists.
Over many months, the Hurtwood team has worked with the scans of the original manuscript, sourced historically appropriate materials and brought the pages to life in print, using everything from the most recent digital advances to printing processes dating back to the fifteenth century to truly recreate a late eighteenth-century handwritten text.
Working alongside us, our bookbinding partners, Ludlow Bookbinders, have done an incredible job of replicating the original binding and gently ageing the notebook until it all feels right – the texture of the paper, the weight in the hand, the look and character of each volume. Every detail has been considered.
The transcription volume was designed by Humphrey Stone and typeset in Bulmer, a typeface cut in the 1790s, when the Wordsworths first began using the notebook. Every surface of the original was photographed by Maciej Pawlikowski, Head of the Cultural Heritage Imaging Laboratory at Cambridge University Library. Each set carries a signed limitation sheet.
A Wordsworth Family Notebook will be published in collaboration with the Wordsworth Trust at Grasmere, as a limited edition of 300 copies.
This Hurtwood New Original™ of A Wordsworth Family Notebook is made possible with the generous support of John Armitage.
Product details:
Includes designed Slipcase; New Original™ of Wordsworth Notebook; Typeset translations of Wordsworth Notebook
123 x 195mm
192pp and 172pp
To be published Autumn 2026
Written by Ruth Abbott, a University Associate Professor in the English Faculty, and a Fellow and Director of Studies at St John’s College, University of Cambridge. I’ve held fellowships at Cornell University, the University of Oxford, the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities (Cambridge), the Harvard University Institute for Renaissance Studies (Villa I Tatti, Florence), the Huntington Library (California), and the Beinecke Library (Yale University).
Abbot has worked on the Wordsworth family’s poetic notebooks since 2006. Interested in what can be learnt when we study these notebooks as whole documents, how the Wordsworths used their notebooks as creative and critical tools, and what they reveal about shared composition and the interaction of speech and writing. As well as articles on this material in Textual Practice, The Wordsworth Circle, and Notes and Queries, Abbott has a digital edition of eleven notebooks, three letters, and the printed book coming out this year in the Cambridge University Digital Library.
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Your item will be shipped using Royal Mail 48 and orders will be dispatched as soon as they are ready, separately from any other item you might order. We aim to deliver your item within the following times:
UK: 1-2 weeks
Europe: 2-4 weeks
Rest of World: 2-4 weeks
Lead times quoted are given in good faith. Where any delay occurs, we will notify you by email as soon as possible.If the delivery time frame has passed and you’re still waiting for something from your order, please get in touch with us at [email protected] , and we’ll investigate for you.
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