One Soul We Divided
A Critical Edition of the Diary of Michael Field
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- $20.99
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
The first book-length selection from the extraordinary unpublished diary of the late-Victorian writer “Michael Field”—the pen name of two female coauthors and romantic partners
Michael Field was known to late-Victorian readers as a superb poet and playwright—until Robert Browning let slip Field’s secret identity: in fact, “Michael Field” was a pseudonym for Katharine Bradley (1846–1914) and Edith Cooper (1862–1913), who were lovers, a devoted couple, and aunt and niece. For thirty years, they kept a joint diary titled Works and Days that eventually reached almost 10,000 pages. One Soul We Divided is the first critical edition of selections from this remarkable unpublished work.
A fascinating personal and literary experiment, the diary tells the extraordinary story of the love, art, ambitions, and domestic life of a queer couple in fin de siècle London. It also tells vivid firsthand stories of the literary and artistic worlds Bradley and Cooper inhabited and of their encounters with such celebrities as Browning, Oscar Wilde, W. B. Yeats, Aubrey Beardsley, and Bernard Berenson. Carolyn Dever provides essential context, including explanatory notes, a cast of characters, a family tree, and a timeline.
An unforgettable portrait of two writers and their unexpected romantic, literary, and artistic marriage, One Soul We Divided rewrites what we think we know about Victorian women, intimacy, and sexuality.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Dartmouth College English professor Dever (Chains of Love and Beauty) compiles selections from the 30-volume joint diary of Victorian-era British writers and lovers Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper, the daughter of Bradley's sister, who together published plays and poems under the pseudonym Michael Field. Aside from one diary solely written by Bradley from 1867 to 1868, the entries detail the lovers' exploits from 1888—four years after the publication of their first plays and around the zenith of their modest literary popularity—until Cooper and Bradley's deaths in 1913 and 1914. The jumbled selections consist of ruminations on poetry and depictions of Britain's literary elite (they write of Oscar Wilde, "There is no charm in his elephantine body tightly stuffed into his clothes"). Some narrative momentum develops in later sections detailing Bradley and Cooper's efforts to build a life together after the death of Cooper's father allows them to move in together, but readers' investment will depend on their ability to stomach an incestuous central couple who, as their diaries show, were often dismissive of other women writers and the suffragist movement. This curious if unruly literary experiment will chiefly be of interest to scholars.
