Michael Field (author)

Katherine Bradley was born on 27 October 1846 in Birmingham, England, the daughter of Charles Bradley, a tobacco manufacturer, and of Emma (née Harris). Her grandfather, also Charles Bradley, was a prominent follower and financial backer of prophetess Joanna Southcott and her self-styled successor John "Zion" Ward.^[1] She attended lectures at the Collège de France in 1868, and in 1874 she attended a course at Newnham College, Cambridge specially designed for women; however, she did not receive a degree for it.

Bradley's elder sister, Emma, married James Robert Cooper in 1860, and went to live in Kenilworth, where their daughter, Edith Emma Cooper was born on 12 January 1862. Emma Cooper became an invalid for life after the birth of her second daughter, Amy, and Katharine Bradley, being her sister, stepped in to become the legal guardian of her niece Edith Cooper.^[2]

Bradley was for a time involved with Ruskin's utopian project. She published first under the pseudonym Arran Leigh, a nod to Elizabeth Barrett. Edith adopted the name Isla Leigh for their first joint publication, Bellerophôn.

From the late 1870s, when Edith was at University College, Bristol, they agreed to live together and were, over the next 40 years, lesbian lovers,^[3] and co-authors. Their first joint publication as Michael Field was "Callirhöe and Fair Rosamund" in 1884. The Athenaeum noted that 'the famous Faun song in 'Callirrhoé,' which has found its way into many anthologies, the Fairy songs in 'Fair Rosamund,' and the whole of the poignant drama of 'The Father's Tragedy' were the work of the younger writer while still a girl.'^[4] They had financial independence.

They were Aestheticists, strongly influenced by the thoughts of Walter Pater. They developed a large circle of literary friends and contacts; in particular painters and life partners Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon, near whom they settled in Richmond, London. Robert Browning was a close friend of theirs—if also the source of their leaked identity—as well as Rudyard Kipling. They also knew and admired Oscar Wilde, whose death they bitterly mourned. While they were always well connected, the early critical success was not sustained (this is often attributed to the joint identity of Field becoming known). They knew many of the aesthetic movement of the 1890s, including Walter Pater, Vernon Lee, J. A. Symonds and also Bernard Berenson. William Rothenstein was a friend. In 1899 the death of Edith's father enabled them to buy their own house as evidence of their "close marriage", although Edith saw her father's death as retribution for their lifestyle. Edith later led the way in establishing the couple as active Catholics.^[5]

 

They wrote a number of passionate love poems to each other, and their name Michael Field was their way of declaring their inseparable oneness. Friends referred to them as the Fields, the Michaels, or the Michael Fields. They had a range of pet names for each other. They also were passionately devoted to their pets, particularly Whym Chow, for whom they wrote a book of elegiac poems entitled Whym Chow: Flame of Love. Their joint journal starts with an account of Bradley's passion for Alfred Gérente, an artist in stained glass and brother of Henri Gérente, who was of an English background but worked mostly in France. It goes on to document Michael Field as a figure, amongst 'his' literary counterparts, and their lives together. When Whym Chow died in 1906, the emotional pattern of the relationship was disturbed; both women became Roman Catholic converts in 1907. Their religious inclinations are reflected in their later works, where their earlier writing is influenced by classical and Renaissance culture, in its pagan aspects particularly, Sappho as understood by the late Victorians, and perhaps Walter Savage Landor.

Katherine had found that she had breast cancer in June 1913 and only told her confessor, Vincent McNabb; she had never told Edith, who had been diagnosed with cancer in 1911. Edith died 13 December 1913 at their home, The Paragon, Richmond.^[6][7] Katherine died 26 September 1914, having moved to a cottage near McNabb at Hawkesyard Priory, Rugeley.^[8][9] They are buried together in the cemetery of St Mary Magdalen Roman Catholic Church in Mortlake.^[10]

In 1923, saddened at their lack of a memorial, Charles Ricketts designed one for them of black stone, for which John Gray wrote the epitaph ('United in blood, united in Christ'). However, this tombstone at St Mary Magdalen Roman Catholic Church Mortlake cracked irreparably in 1926, the year in which it was installed, and is now lost.^[11]

Their extensive diaries are stored in the British Library,^[5] and have been digitized and made available by the Victorian Lives and Letters Consortium.^[12] Carolyn Dever argues that the diaries contain many novelistic qualities—at least up until the time of Whym Chow's death.^[13]

A much-edited selection from the journals, which were two dozen annual volumes in ledgers with aspects of scrapbooks combined with a self-conscious literary style of composition, was prepared by T. Sturge Moore, a friend through his mother Marie.

A review of their poems in 1908 noted that 'One of the London weeklies, announcing the new volume, comments on the strange anomaly that a poet of "Michael Field’s" distinction should have had such slight recognition in this country. A writer in the "Academy" is quoted as saying that "he is perhaps the greatest of our living lyric poets who are actually writing at this time," and it is claimed that those who are acquainted with the poet's work must agree with this appreciation. Without entering into the question of comparative merit (says the "Yorkshire Observer"), it may be readily admitted that the poems have had a genuine note of distinction'.^[14] The Athenaeum noted that 'Seven years ago both poets were received into the Roman Church, and their definitely Catholic work is represented by two volumes of devotional verse: 'Poems of Adoration,' by the younger, and 'Mystic Trees,' by the elder writer.'^[4]

• Lesbian poetry

• Dever, Carolyn. Chains of Love and Beauty: The Diary of Michael Field (Princeton UP, 2022).
• Donoghue, Emma. We Are Michael Field (Absolute Press, 1998).
• Ehnenn, Jill. Michael Field's Revisionary Poetics (Edinburgh UP, 2023).
• Prins, Yopie. Victorian Sappho (1999).
• Sturgeon, Mary. Michael Field (George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd., 1922).
• Treby, Ivor C. (ed). The Michael Field Catalogue: A Book of Lists (1998).
• Treby, Ivor C. Music and Silence: The Gamut of Michael Field (2000).
• Vanita, Ruth. Sappho and the Virgin Mary: Same-Sex Love and the English Literary Imagination (1996).
• Vadillo, Ana. Women Poets and Urban Aestheticism: Passengers of Modernity [1] (Palgrave, 2005).
• Thain, Marion and Ana Vadillo. Michael Field, The Poet. Published and Manuscript Materials [2] (Broadview, 2009).

•   Media related to Michael Field (author) at Wikimedia Commons
•   Works related to Katharine Harris Bradley at Wikisource
•   Works related to Edith Emma Cooper at Wikisource
• Works by or about Michael Field at the Internet Archive
• Works by Michael Field at Project Gutenberg
• Works by Michael Field at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)  
• Michael Field Archived 3 August 2017 at the Wayback Machine (Biography and poems - "Isle of Lesbos")
• Michael Field ("The Poetry Foundation")
• Michael Field ("Women in the Literary Marketplace 1800–1900")
• "Archival material relating to Michael Field". UK National Archives.  
• The Poems of Michael Field