Michael Field (author)

Michael Field was the joint pseudonym of the English writers Katherine Harris Bradley (1846-1914) and Edith Emma Cooper (1862-1913), aunt and niece, as published several volumes of poetry and verse dramas 30.

Life and work

Katherine Bradley was born in 1846 in Birmingham, daughter of a tobacco manufacturer, who died in 1848. After the marriage of the sister in 1860 the family moved to Kenilworth, Warwickshire, where Katherine from 1865 the education her daughter Edith Cooper took over due to the poor health of her sister.

After her mother's death in 1868, Katherine attended the Collège de France and the Newnham College at the University of Cambridge. 1878 Katherine and Edith went together to Bristol, where they finished college courses in Classical Philology and joined the suffragettes. Her later life they spent - apart from trips to Italy, France and England - mainly in London, where they had close contact to the literary scene. There are indications that Katherine and Edith were lovers.

Her first poems (The New Minnesinger and Other Poems ) published in 1875 under the pseudonym of Katherine Bradley Arran Leigh - a reference to Elizabeth Barrett Browning's epic poem "Aurora Leigh ". The first joint work of Bradley and Cooper ( Bellerophon ) was published in 1881 still under the two pseudonyms Arran and Isla Leigh Leigh. From 1884 they wrote as Michael Field.

Michael Fields earlier poetry is mostly influenced by her study of classical antiquity. The references to Greek mythology and cultural history - in particular Dionysus and Sappho ( Long Ago ) - but less evidence of the intention to act as a teachable by a hedonistic questioning Victorian prudery and male dominance in cultural discourse. This rebellious attitude Michael Field were also an important step in the direction of modernity. They experimented occasionally with free and spontaneous forms, their use of images anticipated the imagism:

A Girl, Her soul a deep - wave pearl Dim, lucent of all lovely mysteries; A face flowered for heart 's ease, A brow 's grace soft as seas Seen through faint forest -trees: [ ... ]

Bradley Cooper and in 1907 converted to Catholicism, which left traces in her literary work. Michael Field is now enrolled in the tension between pagan hedonism and Christian penance.

Edit Cooper died in 1913 from cancer. Katherine Bradley worked then only under the pseudonym Michael Field on, but died in 1914, also from cancer.

Posthumously were also diaries and correspondence of the two Michael Field published.

Works (selection)

Poetry

  • Long Ago (1889 )
  • Sight and Song ( 1892)
  • Underneath the Bough (1893 )
  • Wild Honey from Various Thyme (1908 )
  • Poems of Adoration (1912 )
  • Mystic Trees (1913 )

Drama

  • Callirrhoe & Fair Rosamund (1884 )
  • The Father 's Tragedy (1885 )
  • William Rufus (1885 )
  • Loyalty or Love? (1885 )
  • Brutus Ultor (1886 )
  • Canute the Great (1887 )
  • The Cup of Water (1887 )
  • The Tragic Mary ( 1890)
  • Stephania, a Trialogue (1892 )
  • A Question of Memory (1893 )
  • Attila, My Attila! (1896 )
  • Noontide Branches (1899 )
  • Anna Ruina (1899 )
  • Race of Leaves (1901 )
  • Julia Domna (1903 )
  • Borgia (1905 )
  • Queen Mariamne (1908 )
  • Tragedy of Pardon ( 1911)
  • Tristan de Léonois (1911 )
  • Dian (1911)
  • The Accuser (1911 )
  • A Messiah (1911 )
  • Ras Byzance (1918 published)
  • Deirdre (1918 published)
  • In the Name of Time (1919 published)
Lyric poetry Verse drama and dramatic verse Emma Donoghue
568072
de