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Michael Field
(Katherine Bradley, 1862 - 1913 &
Edith Cooper, 1862 - 1913)
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Michael
Field (Homosexuality Series) by Mary C. Sturgeon "Michael
Field" was the combined pen-name of two late-Victorian
Englishwomen, Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper, who spent part
of their youth, then thirty-five years of adult life together,
writing poetry and drama, and advocating women's rights. As the
author of this literary-biographical study puts it "their
friendship ... was clearly on the grand scale, and in the romantic
manner. They were, indeed, absorbed in each other..." About
as far as Sturgeon will go in describing the character of this
romance is indicated in the following passage concerning the love
poems of "Michael" for "Henry" (the two women
sometimes used male names): "it is doubtful whether Laura or
Beatrice or the Dark Lady had a tenderer wooer." These poems
"explain, of course, the slightness of a more usual (or, as
some would put it, a more normal) love interest in Michaels
work". Despite Sturgeon's reticence, her work is a major
early study of the work and lives of two women who, in the words
of one of Bradley's poems, "took hands and swore/ Against the
world, to be/ Poets and lovers evermore .... To sing to Charon in
his boat,/ Heartening the timid souls afloat;/ Of judgment never
to take heed..../ Indifferent to heaven and hell" (Underneath
the Bough, 1898). Although Jeannette H. Foster admits the exact
character of Bradley and Cooper's relation remains ambiguous, she
declares that in their work the two "exhibit consciousness of
the physical possibilities between women more frankly than any
other writers [of their period] except for the portrayal of
fictional characters" (Sex Variant Women in Literature, N.Y.
1956). One volume of verse, Long Ago (1889), based on Sappho's
fragments, apparently caused criticism (Foster, p. 143). Their
friendship with Havelock
Ellis and a number of Gay males, is also suggestive. Whatever
the exact nature of their physical relation, its depth and
intensity make it of major relevance to Gay studies.
Sexual
Sameness : Textual Differences in Lesbian and Gay Writing
by Joseph Bristow (Editor) This
book looks at the differing textual strategies men and women
writers have developed to celebrate same-sex living and loving.
Examines writings as diverse as those of E.M. Forster, James
Baldwin, Sylvia Townsend Warner, and Audre Lord, demonstrating how
literature has been one of the few cultural spaces in which sexual
outsiders have been able to explore forbidden desires. Includes:
Chris White, "Poets and Lovers Ever More: The Poetry and
Journals of Michael Field"
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By Alexandria North
for Sappho.com
Excerpt:
Michael Field was the penname of Katherine
Bradley and her niece, Edith Cooper. Katherine raised Edith from
childhood, and when Edith was sixteen, Katherine attended classes
with her at Bristol University. Katherine published her own poetry
under pseudonym (Arran Leigh), but once she and Edith began
writing together, they assumed the name of Michael Field.
Katherine and Edith wrote numerous plays and
poems in collaboration. Even their journal (which reveals that
they were lovers) was a shared effort. The women claimed that
their collaboration was so complete that once a work was done,
they could no longer recognize which line each had contributed.
Their writing reflects entwined thoughts and ideas that raise
their love into spiritual realms...
This site hosts some Michael Field poetry:
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Excerpt:
Michael Field is the best known of the pen names
used by an aunt and a niece in a literary partnership that spanned
several decades. Katharine Bradley's father was a tobacco
manufacturer; she was educated at home and at Newnham College, the
newly-founded women's college at Cambridge. She shared an interest
in classical language and literature with her niece Edith Cooper,
whom she helped raise, attended lectures with, and who apparently
became her lover in the 1870s.
Bradley and Cooper lived and wrote together,
believing themselves "closer married" than the Brownings
had been, because they collaborated artistically. Their choice of
pseudonym was influenced by their desire to disguise their sex;
they expressed to Robert Browning their belief that the world
would not tolerate what they had to say "from a woman's
lips." Together they wrote much poetry and drama, using their
private income to subsidize the publication of their works in
beautifully-produced limited editions. They also collaborated on a
vast, mostly unpublished, diary which records the details of their
life and works. They converted to Catholicism in 1907 and both
died of cancer...
Site hosts the poems, "Maids,
not to you my mind doth change, "from Long Ago
(1889) and "Cyclamens,"
first published 1893 in Underneath the Bough, A Book of Verses.
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This site from Sonnet
Central hosts the poems, "From Baudelaire,"
"The Poet," and "The Dying Viper."
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Names Index:
A B
C D
E F
G H
I J
K L
M N
O P
Q R
S T
U V
W X
Y Z
| Authors
Index | Scholars
Index |
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