The Fowl and the Pussycat: Love Letters of Michael Field, 1876-1909 (review)

Sharon Bickle's welcome new publication is the first modern scholarly edition of writings by the aunt-and-niece lesbian couple, Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper.

The book brings into print letters between the two that have mostly not been published before: from little-studied manuscripts in Oxford's Bodleian Library, supplemented by a few letters from the British Library and the Pierpont Morgan Library (New York). Most date from the 1880s, the years during which the couple started to write to each other in marital terms. This is also when their collaborative works started appearing, firstly as by "Arran and Isla Leigh," and then (from 1884), as by "Michael Field."

Bickle's editorial task has been a demanding one: there is a plethora of family and personal references difficult to elucidate at this distance. But grappling with them highlights the couple's varying use of names (indeed signaled in the title of this collection), and hence both the personal and public ramifications of their literary pseudonyms. Moreover, Bradley and Cooper were very well-read, especially in art, literature, and philosophy: the collection shows both eagerly profiting from the growing opportunities for women to undertake higher education. Their personal and literary relationship was conducted in correspondence partly through a complex web of textual allusions, and Bickle has done a fine job of illuminating these. It was conducted too via poetry included in letters, so the edition uncovers some new unpublished poems, plus original versions of some published ones.

This edition thus illustrates the trajectory of the couple's relationship as lovers and literary collaborators during the crucial 1880s period. The interdependence of the two aspects is nicely caught in Bradley's 1882 comment on their first "Michael Field" publication, Callirrhoë: "'now we are no more twain; but one flesh,' that the Child should bear stronger marks of resemblance to one parent than the other matters not; She is our flesh and blood" (94). That Bradley has just urged Cooper not to fear "putting in bits of [her] own" shows the older writer encouraging the younger (then twenty), and the collection discloses Cooper's gradual achievement of a stronger personal and literary voice.

Publication also meant reviews, and VPR readers will be interested in the editor's notes on the reception of Bellerophôn (1881), Callirrhoë / Fair Rosamond (1884), and especially The Father's Tragedy / William Rufus / Loyalty or Love? (1885). Most striking is Bradley's impassioned reaction to the contrasting reviews of the 1885 plays in the Athenaeum and the Pall Mall Gazette. She writes to Cooper as both spouse and fellow-poet, urging her, in confronting the Pall Mall's attack, to "rejoice to share the bitter herbs of adversity" that are "Common to all poets," while herself tearing the actual review "to small pieces." Rather, she declares, the pair must continue their habit of metaphorical writing praised by the Athenaeum (148–49). How far Michael Field's later publications might have been influenced by periodical reviews is thus an issue only suggested by Bickle's collection, one that other Field scholars may choose to pursue.