All Before Me - A Search for Belonging in Wordsworth's Lake District (Granta, 2025, Paperback)
A moving and absorbing account of the struggle to know oneself on the journey into adulthood, intertwined with the stories of the Wordsworth siblings at Dove Cottage.
Reviews:
‘Esther Rutter digs deep into the Wordsworth papers to limn this biographical progress, and for that her work will be of value to common readers and students alike [...] the book is a poem, a song of the self’ - Brian Morton, Times Literary Supplement
‘With this powerful, affecting memoir of a year immersed in the realm of arguably England’s greatest poet, Rutter has distilled perfectly a combination of landscape, history and personal memoir into an extraordinary book. Skilfully structured and benefiting greatly from the hindsight of the intervening years, All Before Me had this Wordsworth fan flipping through the Wordsworth sections to seek out the next step in Rutter’s brave, honest and uplifting journey back to herself’. - Charlie Connolly, The New European
‘[A]live with fascinating episodes and potted histories and, even more importantly, a heartfelt commitment to the power of place and of poetry to sustain lives and minds.’ - Alex Clark, The Guardian
A moving and absorbing account of the struggle to know oneself on the journey into adulthood, intertwined with the stories of the Wordsworth siblings at Dove Cottage.
Reviews:
‘Esther Rutter digs deep into the Wordsworth papers to limn this biographical progress, and for that her work will be of value to common readers and students alike [...] the book is a poem, a song of the self’ - Brian Morton, Times Literary Supplement
‘With this powerful, affecting memoir of a year immersed in the realm of arguably England’s greatest poet, Rutter has distilled perfectly a combination of landscape, history and personal memoir into an extraordinary book. Skilfully structured and benefiting greatly from the hindsight of the intervening years, All Before Me had this Wordsworth fan flipping through the Wordsworth sections to seek out the next step in Rutter’s brave, honest and uplifting journey back to herself’. - Charlie Connolly, The New European
‘[A]live with fascinating episodes and potted histories and, even more importantly, a heartfelt commitment to the power of place and of poetry to sustain lives and minds.’ - Alex Clark, The Guardian
A moving and absorbing account of the struggle to know oneself on the journey into adulthood, intertwined with the stories of the Wordsworth siblings at Dove Cottage.
Reviews:
‘Esther Rutter digs deep into the Wordsworth papers to limn this biographical progress, and for that her work will be of value to common readers and students alike [...] the book is a poem, a song of the self’ - Brian Morton, Times Literary Supplement
‘With this powerful, affecting memoir of a year immersed in the realm of arguably England’s greatest poet, Rutter has distilled perfectly a combination of landscape, history and personal memoir into an extraordinary book. Skilfully structured and benefiting greatly from the hindsight of the intervening years, All Before Me had this Wordsworth fan flipping through the Wordsworth sections to seek out the next step in Rutter’s brave, honest and uplifting journey back to herself’. - Charlie Connolly, The New European
‘[A]live with fascinating episodes and potted histories and, even more importantly, a heartfelt commitment to the power of place and of poetry to sustain lives and minds.’ - Alex Clark, The Guardian
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