The Poets' Daughters

Book excerpt: " You are the best poetry he ever produced: a bright spark out of two flints.' Dora Wordsworth and Sara Coleridge, were life-long friends. They were also the daughters of best friends: William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the two poetic geniuses who shaped the Romantic Age. Living in the shadow of their fathers' extraordinary fame brought Sara and Dora great privilege, but at a terrible cost. In different ways, each father almost destroyed his daughter. Growing up in the shadow of genius, each girl made it her life's ambition to dedicate herself to her father's writing and reputation. Anorexia, drug addiction and depression were part of the legacy of fame, but so too were great friendship and love. Drawing on a host of new sources, Katie Waldegrave tells the never-before-told story of how two young women, born into greatness, shaped their own legacies."