Mary Elizabeth Coleridge

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Mary Elizabeth Coleridge

Mary Elizabeth Coleridge (23 September 1861 – 25 August 1907) was a British novelist and poet who also wrote essays and reviews.[1] She wrote poetry under the pseudonym Anodos (a name taken from George MacDonald). Other influences on her were Richard Watson Dixon and Christina Rossetti. Robert Bridges, the Poet Laureate, described her poems as 'wonderously beautiful… but mystical rather and enigmatic'.[2]

Biography[]

Mary Coleridge was the daughter of Arthur Duke Coleridge, the lawyer and influential amateur musician. With the singer Jenny Lind, her father was responsible for the formation of the London Bach Choir in 1875. Other family friends included Robert Browning, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, John Millais and Fanny Kemble. She was the great-grandniece of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the great niece of Sara Coleridge, the author of Phantasmion.

Coleridge was educated at home, mostly by the poet and educationalist W. J. Cory, and began writing poetry as a child.[3] She travelled widely throughout her life, although her home was in London, where she lived with her family. She taught at the London Working Women's College for twelve years from 1895 to 1907.

She completed five novels. Her first was The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, which Chatto & Windus published in February 1893 as by M. E. Coleridge. At least one newspaper noted it as "a new story by Mr M. E. Coleridge".[4] The story is not related to the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus legend; it features a modern Brotherhood which takes that name.[5] Edward Arnold published the other four novels. The best known is The King with Two Faces, which earned her £900 in royalties in 1897.

Coleridge died of complications arising from appendicitis while on holiday in Harrogate in 1907, leaving an unfinished manuscript for her next novel and hundreds of unpublished poems. Her poetry was first published under her own name in the posthumous Poems (1908). In the preface to this volume, Henry Newbolt wrote:[6]

As a poetess, Mary Coleridge never came before the public under her own name; her printed verse was always either anonymous or signed with the pseudonym ’Άνοδος — a name taken from George Macdonald's romance, "Phantastes," where it is evidently intended to bear the meaning of "Wanderer." Probably several reasons or feelings prompted this concealment; the one by which my own arguments were always met was the fear of tarnishing the name which an ancestor had made illustrious in English poetry [...] I believe that no poems are less likely than these to jar upon lovers of "Christabel" and "The Ancient Mariner."

In 1954 interest was revived by the first comprehensive Collected Poems to be issued, edited by Rupert Hart-Davis and with an introduction by Theresa Whistler.[7] More recently, her work has been further re-assessed and included in anthologies of fin de siècle Victorian women's poetry by Angela Leighton and Margaret Reynolds,[8] and Isobel Armstrong and Joseph Bristow.[9][10] Heather Braun contributed a substantial introduction to a reprint of her final published novel, The Lady on the Drawingroom Floor (with selected poetry and prose) in 2018.[11]

Musical settings[]

The relative simplicity of Mary Coleridge's lyrical poetry, combined with its touch of mysticism and strong imagery, proved congenial to composers.[12] Both Hubert Parry and Charles Villiers Stanford were friends of Mary's father, and frequent visitors to the family home at 12, Cromwell Place, South Kensington. Parry set seven of her poems as songs for voice and piano in his English Lyrics, Ninth Set, published in 1909.[13] In the opinion of Trevor Hold, "no-one set her more sympathetically than Parry."[14] Stanford composed two sets of eight choral partsongs, Op. 119 and Op. 127 (both 1910).[15][16] By far the best known of these is "The Blue Bird", from Mary's poem originally published in 1897 under the French title "L'Oiseau Bleu".[17] Other settings include several by John Ireland and Roger Quilter, three poems (including "Thy Hand in Mine") by Frank Bridge, and a set four poems for solo voice and orchestra by Cyril Rootham (later also arranged for voice and piano).[18]

Published works[]

  • The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. London: Chatto & Windus, 1893[19]
  • Anodos (1900) [1st published by Daniel, Oxford, 1896]. Fancy's Following. Portland, ME: Thomas B Mosher. hdl:2027/uc1.31822038204566.
  • Anodos (1897). Fancy's Guerdon. London: Elkin Mathews.
  • The King with Two Faces. London: Edward Arnold, 1897
  • Non Sequitur. London: J. Nisbet, 1900 (essays)
  • The Fiery Dawn. London: Edward Arnold, 1901
  • The Shadow on the Wall: a romance. London: Edward Arnold, 1904
  • The Lady on the Drawingroom Floor. London: Edward Arnold, 1906
  • Holman Hunt. London: T. C. & E. C. Jack; New York: F. A. Stokes Co., [1908] (three numbers of Masterpieces in Colour issued together: Millais / by A. L. Baldry – Holman Hunt / by M. E. Coleridge – Rossetti / by L. Pissarro.)
  • Poems by Mary E. Coleridge. London: Elkin Mathews, 1908
  • The Collected Poems of Mary Coleridge, ed. Theresa Whistler. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1954
  • The Lady on the Drawingroom Floor with Selected Poetry and Prose, ed. Heather Braun. Vancouver: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2018.

References[]

  1. ^ Mary Elizabeth Coleridge – Poems, Biography, Quotes
  2. ^ Phillips, Catherine, 'Robert Bridges' Oxford University Press, Oxford 1992 ISBN 0-19-212251-7
  3. ^ Hartley, Cathy. A Historical Dictionary of British Women (2013), p 226
  4. ^ "Books of the Week", The Scotsman, 20 February 1893, p. 2 (no review).
  5. ^ "New novels", The Academy, p. 302, 8 April 1893
  6. ^ Coleridge, Mary E. (1908). Poems. London: Elkin Mathews. pp. v–vi.
  7. ^ Lord David Cecil. 'A Victorian Poetess', in The Observer, 25 July 1954, p 8
  8. ^ ‘Mary E. Coleridge’, in Victorian women poets: an anthology, ed. A. Leighton and M. Reynolds (1995), 610–26
  9. ^ Nineteenth Century Women Poets: An Oxford Anthology, ed. Isobel Armstrong and Joseph Bristow (1996)
  10. ^ Chapman, Alison. 'Mary Elizabeth Coleridge and the Flight to Lyric', in The Yearbook of English Studies, Vol. 37, No. 1 (2007), pp. 145-160
  11. ^ Rowman & Littlefield
  12. ^ H C Colles. 'Parry as Song-Writer', in The Musical Times, vol. 62, No. 936 (February 1921), pp. 82-87
  13. ^ Lieder.net
  14. ^ Hold, Trevor. Parry to Finzi: Twenty English Song Composers (2005), p 22
  15. ^ Stanford, Partsongs, SOMM CD0128 (2013)
  16. ^ Notes to Stanford and Howells Remembered, Collegium CSCD524 (1992)
  17. ^ Anodos (1897). Fancy's Guerdon. London: Elkin Mathews. p. 27.
  18. ^ Lieder.net
  19. ^ Multiple WorldCat library records report the 1893 publication—evidently, considering all the records, in the publisher's Handy Novels series, as by M. E. Coleridge.

External links[]

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