Carl Ketchum
Carl Ketchum | |
|---|---|
| Occupation | scholar |
Notable work |
The Letters of John Wordsworth |
Carl Ketchum is a scholar who specialized in the Wordsworth family, the poet William Wordsworth, his sister Dorothy Wordsworth, also a writer, and their younger brother John Wordsworth, a sailor in the service of the East India Company.[1][2][3][4] In 1969 Ketchum published The Letters of John Wordsworth.[5]
Since Ketchum published John Wordsworth's correspondence, he was able to definitively rebut the assertions in Constance Pilgrim's book Dear Jane, in which she attempted to prove that the author Jane Austen's secret love affair with the real Captain John Wordsworth was fictionalized in Persuasion's fictional story about fictional Anne Elliot's love for fictional Captain Frederick Wentworth.[1]
References
[edit | edit source]- ↑ 1.0 1.1
Joan Garden Cooper (2011-01-01). Austen, Byron, and Scott: Domestic Virtues and Fashioning History—Britain 1805 Through 1819 (PDF) (Thesis). University of Denver. p. 56. Archived from the original on 2025-01-19. Retrieved 2025-01-19.
Yet, according to Carl Ketchum, there is "not a scrap of evidence" that "Jane" ever met "John" not is there any indication that Wordsworth had time to engage in a love affair during the ship's delay in Tor Bay.
- ↑
Richard Matlak (Summer 2000). "Wordsworth, Beaumont, and the Publicity over Captain John Wordsworth's Death at Sea". Retrieved 2025-01-19.
My assertion that Wordsworth read the pamphlet here to be described and discussed is based upon his annotations in pen and pencil. Carl Ketchum refers to Wordsworth's annotating the pamphlet in Letters of John Wordsworth: 178. Duncan Wu says in Wordsworth's Reading, 1800 - 1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995): 3, entry 8, that it is unclear "whether the Wordsworths ever saw the pamphlet," but this seems to be an oversight.
- ↑ Robert C. Hale (1996). Wordsworth's Mother Tongue: Identification, Separation, and Recognition (PDF) (Thesis). Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College. Retrieved 2025-01-19.
- ↑
Polly Atkin (19 April 2022). "Recovering Dorothy by Polly Atkin (Ebook)". Everand. Retrieved 2025-01-19.
Carl Ketchum, in 1978, is slightly more ambiguous, placing Dorothy not in death, but in darkness: ‘mental darkness’. This echoes Millicent Fawcett’s description of Dorothy in her 1889 group biography Some Eminent Woman of Our Time: ‘her memory was darkened, and her spirits, once so blithe and gay, became clouded and dull’. For Ketchum, Dorothy’s illness in 1829 marks not the end of her life, but the ‘end of Dorothy’s active life as a wanderer and sightseer’.
- ↑ John Wordsworth; Carl H. Ketcham (1969). The Letters of John Wordsworth. Cornell University Press. Retrieved 2025-01-19.