Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Charlotte Mew
-
Standard Name: Mew, Charlotte
Birth Name: Charlotte Mary Mew
Nickname: Lotti
Pseudonym: M.
Charlotte Mew is best known and regarded as an early twentieth century poet, though she also published a few short stories and essays. Her poems, often dramatic monologues, are haunted by unrequited love, the renunciation of passion, and death. Subtle experiment with form and metre is discernible in their unusually long lines, the frequent use of monosyllables, mixed metres, and repeated, irregular rhymes. CM
's work was admired by several poets of her day, notably Thomas Hardy
, with whom she shares an affinity for harsh rural settings and socially isolated characters. Despite the enthusiasm of both initial and recent critics, her poetic achievements remain under-recognised.
Williams-Ellis divided her text into five sections according to audience, respectively written For All, For Philosophers, For Missionaries, For Critics, and For Readers. The last section consists of short studies...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
May Sinclair
According to biographer Suzanne Raitt
, MS
sometimes used aspects of her own experience in her stories. The Pin-Prick, 1915, about a young woman so sensitive that she kills herself in response to a...
Textual Production
Penelope Fitzgerald
PF
published her last biography, Charlotte Mew
and Her Friends.
Whitaker’s Books in Print. J. Whitaker and Sons.
(1988)
Harvey-Wood, Harriet. “Penelope Fitzgerald”. The Guardian, p. 22.
Other radio plays that MW
has written about women writers include An Uncommon Love, based on Hannah Cullwick
's relationship with Arthur Munby
, A Consoling Blue, about Jean Rhys
's writing of...
Textual Production
Frances Cornford
Spring Morning proved to be immensely popular. The Poetry Bookshop
reprinted it in 1918 and issued a new edition in 1923.
Woolmer, J. Howard, and Penelope Fitzgerald. The Poetry Bookshop, 1912-1935: A Bibliography. Woolmer/Brotherson.
22
Each printing had a press run of one thousand, making a total of...
In her title-poem LMS
asks, Dare I believe / That from so numb, So parched a source / New streams may come?
Sackville, Lady Margaret. Return to Song, and Other Poems. Williams and Norgate.
5
She writes that the rhythmic form of long, sweeping lines that she...
Textual Features
H. D.
HD's reviews of poetry volumes for The Egoist show some of her literary principles already formed: the artist's responsibility to society as well as to art, her belief that art can stand against the selfishness...
The Headland was strongly influenced by the writing of Dorothy Richardson
, whom Dawson Scott had met in Cornwall during the first world war. Its story takes three chapters for three cataclysmic days. The protagonist...
Textual Features
May Sinclair
Like May Cannan
(different though Cannan's idiom is), MS
continued to express her regret over her exclusion from the via dolorosa of the war: like an unloved hand laid on a beating heart / Our...
Textual Features
May Sinclair
Defending H.D. against Harold Monro
's criticism, MS
insisted that the Imagist style was unique for sheer emotion, for clean-cut and perfect beauty.
Raitt, Suzanne. May Sinclair: A Modern Victorian. Clarendon Press.
196
Nevertheless, she hedged her bets by telling Charlotte Mew
that her...
Textual Features
Fleur Adcock
Again her introduction is interesting and trenchant. She observes that the early twentieth century already feels remote. Her selection runs from Charlotte Mew
(born in 1869) to a clutch of women a little over thirty:...
Textual Features
Catherine Carswell
In this chapter CC
also challenges the spite and unfairness of comments made by T. E. Lawrence
on Charlotte Mew
, and through her on [a]ll the women who ever wrote.
Carswell, Catherine. Lying Awake: An Unfinished Autobiography and Other Posthumous Papers. Editor Carswell, John, Secker and Warburg.
116
Timeline
1 January 1913: Harold Monro opened the Poetry Bookshop at...
