Dora Wordsworth Dora Wordsworth Dorothy "Dora" Wordsworth (16 August 1804 – 9 July 1847) was the only surviving daughter of William Wordsworth (1770–1850). Her infancy inspired Wordsworth to write "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 and Sara Coleridge, daughters of her father's fellow Lake Poets. In 1843, at the age of 39, Dora Wordsworth married Edward Quillinan 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
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner that the poem may have been inspired by the voyage of Thomas James into the Arctic. According to William Wordsworth, the poem was inspired while Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Wordsworth's sister Dorothy were on a walking tour through the Quantock Hills in Somerset. The discussion had turned to a book that Wordsworth was reading, "A Voyage Round The World by Way of the Great South Sea" (1726) by Captain George Shelvocke. In the book, a melancholy sailor, Simon Hatley, shoots a black albatross: As they discussed Shelvocke's book, Wordsworth proffers the following developmental critique to Coleridge, which importantly contains a reference