[ Rotha Quillinan, daughter of Wordsworth's son-in-law Edward Quillinan, and granddaughter of Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges. ] Offprint of notice of the 'Death of Rotha Quillinan'.

Galley proof with 69 lines of text in a single column of small type, on slip of paper laid down on leaf removed from album. At foot: 'Westmoreland Gazette, Feb. 12, 1876.' In good condition, lightly aged. The text begins: 'Another personal link between the present generation and the band of poets and writers whose memory hovers around the Lake district has been severed in the death, last week, of Miss Rotha Quillinan. She was the second daughter of Edward Quillinan the disciple and friend of Wordsworth, a man of high culture, and a not unworthy representative of the Lake school of poets.' The article begins by discussing Quillinan's life and introduction to Wordsworth: 'A close friendship at once sprang up between the two, and the same year Quillinan left the army, and established himself at Spring Cottage, a house on the banks of the Rotha, where the subject of this notice was born. Fourteen lines are taken up quoting Edward Quillinan's 'well-known sonnet' on his daughter, beginning 'Rotha, my Spritual Child! This head was grey'. The circumstances following the death of Rotha's mother are described, including the travels of the Quillinan family ('[…] in the winter of 1843 they took up their residence at Ambleside, passing the summers of that and the succeeding years at Belle Isle, Mr. Bridson's charming insular retreat on Lake Windermere, where Professor Wilson and others seem to have visited them. Two or three years later they permanently settled at Loughrigg Holme, a cottage built almost on the rock which forms the base of Loughrigg, and half way between Ambleside and Rydal Mount.') After Quillinan's death in 1851 his daughters continued to reside at Loughrigg: 'Miss Rotha Quillinan and her sister had won for themselves a repute for unostentatious goodness, and in Ambleside they have always been highly esteemed, especially amongst the poor, who attended the funeral last Saturday in Grasmere churchyard in large numbers. Her body lies in the plot of her godfather, Wm. Wordsworth, and on the banks of the beautiful river whose name she bore.' In manuscript on the reverse of the leaf on which the proof is laid down are the final stanzas of the poem 'Forgotten' by Elizabeth Akers Allen.