Michael Field and Their World, and: 'Michael Field': Poetry, Aestheticism and the Fin de Siècle (review)

There no longer is any need to introduce Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper, the aunt and niece couple who wrote poetry under a male pseudonym. In the past twenty years, thanks to the revival of scholarly interest in Victorian poetry as well as feminist recuperations of neglected writers, Michael Field has finally gained the recognition the two women longed for. They are generously represented in current anthologies, and critical essays about their poetry and their friendship appear with increasing frequency. These two books advance Field studies in important ways; fortunately neither feels the need to apologize for the erotic interest Cooper and Bradley found in each other, nor their almost willful decision to publish expensive private editions of their work, nor their conversion to a scrupulous Catholicism. Indeed, well-documented personal eccentricities become evidence here of their uniquely self-confident genius. The essays and book offer a broad, fascinating critical look at Field, their place in fin-desiècle aesthetic movements, and the full range of their poetry. They also confirm the extraordinary intellectual and creative daring of the two women.

The anthology of essays edited by Margaret D. Stetz and Cheryl A. Wilson grew out of a remarkably fruitful conference in 2004, organized by Stetz and Mark Samuels Lasner at the University of Delaware. Lasner's incomparable collection of fin-de siècle first editions, letters, and drawings reminded participants of why and how Bradley and Cooper took advantage of an extraordinarily rich world of book-making. Craftsmanship extended beyond the written to encompass the visual and tactile—and aural, as participants were treated to poems set to music. This anthology captures much of the excitement of that conference. The strongest essays fall into two groups: those that provide important new insight into the lives of these determined women and those that examine their publication history. After reading Sharon Bickle's essay on the early letters between the two women, when Cooper's mother (and Bradley's older sister) attempted to separate the two, I look forward to her edition of the letters. They will provide us with new insight into how the women came to collaborate so successfully in their early volumes of poetry and, I hope, will also pave the way to a scholarly biography. Diana Maltz's careful recuperation of Bradley's early enthusiasm for socialism and Linda K. Hughes's deft recreation of Louise Chandler Moulton's literary salon both contribute to our understanding of the lively cultural cross-currents affecting writers during the 1880s and 1890s.

Authors disagree in useful ways in this collection. For example, Chris Snodgrass's argument that the two women shared a Classical sense of tragedy provides a fresh angle on their attraction to Catholic asceticism and aestheticism. He argues convincingly that "Michael Field embraces . . . tragedy as inescapable but altogether necessary. Such a world view may explain, in part, why the Fields were never drawn to socialism, a political stance that . . . [seeks] to mitigate human tragedy" (178). His essay complements not only Maltz's piece, but also Holly Laird's close examination of the Fields' repeated use of the pseudonym "by the author of Borgia." Their friend Charles Ricketts claimed that their research for Borgia (1905) had led to their religious conversion, which helps to explain why this particular play remained so important to them. Laird describes how they continued to publish their tragedies under this name, with the approval of Bradley's confessor, and saved "Michael Field" for their Catholic poetry. While these authors see a continuity of feeling and approach throughout the Fields' career, others point to the future or to breaks in their aesthetics. Frederick S. Roden and Richard Dellamora both link Michael Field to such well-known Modernist converts as...