Mary Elizabeth Coleridge published five novels, two collections of prose, and one work of biography during the later nineteenth and very early twentieth centuries. She also contributed essays and reviews to periodicals. By the end of her life, she had penned close to three hundred poems, both published (all under the pseudonym 'Anodos') and unpublished. Her essays and novels were well known and her poetry was admired by her fellow writers. Despite the popularity of her work its day, she is now largely unknown to readers, although mentioned occasionally in feminist criticism.
Milestones
23 September 1861 Novelist and poet MEC was born at
Hyde Park Square in
London, the elder child in her family.
1874 or 1875 At the age of thirteen, MEC penned her earliest known poem, "The Ballad of Autumn".
1882 MEC composed what is still her most famous poem, "The Other Side of a Mirror"; it was printed fourteen years later in her collection
Fancy's Following.
25 August 1907 At the age of forty-five, MEC died at
Harrogate in
Yorkshire following an attack of acute appendicitis.
