Anne Ridler

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Standard Name: Ridler, Anne
Birth Name: Anne Barbara Bradby
Married Name: Anne Barbara Ridler
AR was a twentieth-century poet and verse playwright whose work has been called metaphysical. She also edited and wrote introductions and commentary for literary works by others, produced translations of opera libretti, and left memoirs which were published after her death. Writing about personal experiences (including childbirth), about her faith, and about public or political concerns (much of her earlier poetry is filled with dread and darkness connected with the two World Wars), she links this world closely with her belief in God. AR creates a meditative quality in her poems through complexly structured metaphor. Critic Kathleen Morgan comments that she writes as one who experienced the happiest of family relationships. . . . and her life within that of the family is related to the larger life of the individual child of God.
Morgan, Kathleen. “’The Holiness of the Heart’s Affections’: Poetry of Anne Ridler”. Christian Themes in Contemporary Poets, SCM Press, pp. 144-53.
144-5

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Textual Production Susan Hill
SH edited People: Essays & Poems, issued to benefit Oxfam . Contributors (including Iris Murdoch , Margaret Drabble , Anne Ridler , and Elizabeth Longford ) were invited to write about someone influential in their life.
OCLC WorldCat. http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.
Hill, Susan, editor. People: Essays & Poems. Chatto and Windus.
prelims
Textual Production Kathleen Raine
KR 's poetry, which focusses on archetypal forms of being, is influenced by Swedenborg and the Neo-Platonists. She was also fascinated by the avant-garde movements of her era: Bloomsbury Humanism, Freud ianism, Wittgenstein 's and...
Textual Production E. J. Scovell
EJS published her third volume of poetry, entitled The River Steamer, and Other Poems, containing what is probably her best-known single piece, The Swan's Feet. Anne Ridler helped her to achieve this publication.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.
Textual Production T. S. Eliot
It was an inauspicious time for an opening, because of gathering war-clouds. Anne Ridler later wrote, it was a great pity that Eliot had refused to offer the part [of Harry, the pivotal character] to...

Timeline

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Texts

Ridler, Anne. The Trial of Thomas Cranmer. Faber and Faber, 1956.
Ridler, Anne. Who is My Neighbour?; and, How Bitter the Bread. Faber and Faber, 1963.
Ridler, Anne. “Working for T.S. Eliot: A Personal Reminiscence”. Poetry Review, Vol.
73
, No. 1, pp. 46-9.