Mathilde Blind

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MB was one of the leading poets of the later nineteenth century; her burning sense of political and social injustice runs like a unifying thread through her work. Her poetry combines great beauty of sound and image with vigorous narrative, delineation of character, emotional expressiveness, and engagement with intellectual ideas. It ranges from long narrative or philosophical poems to songs and sonnets. She also wrote journalism, translation, literary criticism, biography, and a novel. Much of her work is instinct with reforming and feminist opinion, reflecting the influence of George Eliot , George Sand , and especially Elizabeth Barrett Browning .
  • BirthNames: Mathilde Cohen; Blind
    She did not use her father's name (Cohen), but assumed and published under the name of her stepfather, Blind.

  • Pseudonyms: Alma
    This is the name MB uses for herself in her unpublished autobiography.
    Thesing, William B., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 199. Gale Research, 1999.
    29
    ; Claude Lake
  • Indexed: Matilda Blind
    Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
    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.
    Cevasco, George A., editor. The 1890s: An Encyclopedia of British Literature, Art, and Culture. Garland Publishing, 1993.
    65

Milestones

21 March 1841

MB was born at Mannheim in Germany, the younger of two children.
Garnett, Richard, and Mathilde Blind. “Memoir”. The Poetical Works of Mathilde Blind, edited by Arthur Symons and Arthur Symons, T. Fisher Unwin, 1900, pp. 1-43.
2
Thesing, William B., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 199. Gale Research, 1999.
29

Between 1855 and 1858

MB and her schoolgirl friends at the Ladies' Institute in St John's Wood collaborated in writing poetry, a periodical, and even novels.
Thesing, William B., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 199. Gale Research, 1999.
29

By 18 May 1889

MB celebrated the theory of evolution in The Ascent of Man. With Other Poems; the title piece is her most ambitious poem.
It was reviewed on this date by the Manchester Examiner.
Blind, Mathilde. The Ascent of Man. Chatto and Windus, 1889.
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Blind, Mathilde. The Ascent of Man. Chatto and Windus, 1889.
7

26 November 1896

MB died at 96 Belgrave Road, London.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Biography

Origins, Influences, Family

21 March 1841

MB was born at Mannheim in Germany, the younger of two children.
Garnett, Richard, and Mathilde Blind. “Memoir”. The Poetical Works of Mathilde Blind, edited by Arthur Symons and Arthur Symons, T. Fisher Unwin, 1900, pp. 1-43.
2
Thesing, William B., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 199. Gale Research, 1999.
29