Mary Elizabeth Coleridge

23 September 1861 - 25 August 1907

MEC 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the end of her life, she had penned close to three hundred poems, both published (all under the pseudonym Anodos) and unpublished.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.

Coleridge, Mary Elizabeth. “Preface”. Poems, edited by Henry Newbolt, Elkin Mathews, p. v - xii.

viii

Jackson, Vanessa Furse. “Breaking the Quiet Surface: The Shorter Poems of Mary Coleridge”. English Literature in Transition, Vol.

, No. 1, pp. 41-62.

Milestones

23 September 1861

Novelist and poet MEC was born at Hyde Park Square in London, the elder child in her family.

Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder.

Coleridge, Mary Elizabeth. “Introduction and Editorial Materials”. The Collected Poems of Mary Coleridge, edited by Theresa Whistler, Rupert Hart-Davis, pp. 21-81.

1874 or 1875

At the age of thirteen, MEC penned her earliest known poem, The Ballad of Autumn.

Stanford, Donald E., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 19. Gale Research.

Coleridge, Mary Elizabeth. “Memoir and Editorial Materials”. Gathered Leaves from the Prose of Mary E. Coleridge, edited by Edith Sichel, Constable, pp. 1 - 44; various pages.

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.

Battersby, Christine. “Her Blood and His Mirror: Mary Coleridge, Luce Irigaray, and the Female Self”. Beyond Representation: Philosophy and Poetic Imagination, edited by Richard Eldridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 249-72.

251

Coleridge, Mary Elizabeth. “Preface”. Poems, edited by Henry Newbolt, Elkin Mathews, p. v - xii.

25 August 1907

At the age of forty-five, MEC died at Harrogate in Yorkshire following an attack of acute appendicitis.

Stanford, Donald E., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 19. Gale Research.

77, 79

Biography

Birth

23 September 1861

Novelist and poet MEC was born at Hyde Park Square in London, the elder child in her family.

Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder.

Coleridge, Mary Elizabeth. “Introduction and Editorial Materials”. The Collected Poems of Mary Coleridge, edited by Theresa Whistler, Rupert Hart-Davis, pp. 21-81.