Customer Reviews

We Are Michael Field (Outlines)

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Michael Field was the psuedyonm used by two women to write poetry, plays, prose, and keep a detailed journal of their lives. It is a remarkable story by all accounts. Their poetry has recently, in the past 10 years or so, been re-discovered and places them in the same category as many of the Great Victorian Poets, i.e., Wilde, Swinburne, Rossetti, and others. To label them simply by the title of lesbian literature limits 2 women whose works are some of the best produced during their time period. What Emma Donoghue does is tell Elizabeth Bradley and Edith Cooper's story simply and easily. After reading her book, I was so interested in these 2 women I spent days, weeks and even months searching down more information on them. Donoghue brings them to us in a moving and unexpected way. This book is a joy to read whether you are interested in Victorian literature, Lesbian literature, or simply human interest stories. I highly recommend this book as an introduction to 2 wonderful and creative writers.

This is an excellent introductory biography of Michael Field. There is not much written about these two remarkable women writing under a pseudonym in the late-Victorian period, but this book broadly covers all of the bases. The major negative from a scholarly point of view is that nothing is foot or endnoted, making discovering exactly where Donoghue came up with certain information something of a guessing game. Still, this book is an excellent, easy, interesting, and detailed read.

This is a good short introductory biography about two wealthy spinsterish Victorian women, an aunt and her niece, who were lovers and lived together writing poetry *together* under a single pseudonym. Their poetry was highly acclaimed in their day and published under the masculine pseudonym "Michael Field". Unfortunately, this eccentric pair and their writings are no longer remembered today and little has been known about them until this book was published, bringing to light rare information culled from unpublished journals and letters. This is the story of two unusual and extraordinary artists who did everything together, including write with each other by day and sleep with each other by night. They had likeable and unlikeable sides to their perosnality and not all of their views and attitudes would be acceptable in today's more liberal times. But they proved, above all, that they were human, and their talent deserves a second glance, a second chance.

David Rehak
author of "Poems From My Bleeding Heart"

Michael Field was a successful, well-regarded poet and playright in Victorian England... until critics discovered that "Michael Field" was a pseudonym used by not one, but TWO women writing collaboratively. What even the suddenly-lukewarm critics didn't appreciate - not only were "the Michaels" (as they were known to friends) aunt and niece, but they were also lovers and partners in an extraordinay personal and artistic life. They wrote eleven volumes of poetry and thirty historical tragedies, but perhaps their most fascinating work was the diary that the two women shared for a quarter of a century. Novelist Emma Donaghue has done a marvelous bit of literary biographical research in this revealing look at the lives, loves, and eccentricities of Katherine Bradley (1846-1914) and her niece Edith Cooper (1862-1913).