All Before Me, A Search for Belonging in Wordsworth’s Lake District: Esther Rutter.

All Before Me, A Search for Belonging in Wordsworth’s Lake District: Esther Rutter in conversation with Jack Arthurs.

In her early twenties, Esther Rutter suffered an acute mental breakdown while teaching English in Japan. Sectioned and held in a Japanese psychiatric institution, her recovery only began when she came to live and work in the Lake District at Dove Cottage, the home of William and Dorothy Wordsworth. All Before Me is a moving account of the struggle to know oneself on the journey into adulthood, intertwined with the stories of the Wordsworth siblings at Dove Cottage.

Esther Rutter is the author of This Golden Fleece, a non-fiction exploration of Britain’s knitted history. Writer in Residence and Research Fellow at the University of St Andrews since 2017, she previously worked at the Wordsworth Trust in Grasmere, the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum in Ayrshire, and for UNESCO City of Literature Trust in Edinburgh.

Jack Arthurs is a musician and songwriter. He studied English at Newcastle University, and has worked at the Wordsworth Trust, Poems on the Underground and Granta.

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