Michael Field

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As MF , Katharine Harris Bradley and Edith Cooper published twenty-seven tragedies, mostly verse dramas on historical or classical subjects. Only one of their plays was staged, and it received poor reviews. Their unique literary collaboration also produced eight collections of poetry, one of which pays tribute to Sappho . Selections from their journal and letters appeared posthumously. Their Greek paganism influenced their earliest works, while their conversion to Roman Catholicism left its mark on later ones. Although MF 's work fell out of favour with most readers and critics early in her career, this collaborative oeuvre has enjoyed a recent renaissance.
Photo of Michael Field (that is, of Katherine Harris Bradley, left, and Edith Emma Cooper. right) from the waist up, leaning toward each other. They are wearing plain black dresses.

Milestones

27 October 1846
Katharine Harris Bradley (who was later known, along with Edith Cooper , as MF ) was born at the address 10 Digbeth in Birmingham, the much younger one of two girls in her family.
The Feminist Companion misprints Katharine's birth date as 1864.
Blain, Virginia, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
Sturgeon, Mary. Michael Field. G. G. Harrap, 1922.
14
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
12 January 1862
Edith Cooper (who later shared the pen name MF with Katharine Harris Bradley ) was born at Kenilworth in Warwickshire, at an address in the High Street; she was the elder of two girls.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
By 24 July 1875
Katharine Harris Bradley (later one of the writing partnership who made up MF ) published a volume of poems, The New Minnesinger, under the pseudonym Arran Leigh.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
2491 (1875): 114
Blain, Virginia, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
By 18 June 1889
Writing as MF , Katharine Harris Bradley and Edith Cooper published Long Ago, a collection of poems written around the surviving fragments of Sappho .
Prins, Yopie. Victorian Sappho. Princeton University Press, 1999.
93
Blain, Virginia, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
13 December 1913
Edith Cooper (known collectively with Katharine Harris Bradley as the poet MF ) died of cancer at The Paragon, Petersham Road, Richmond, Surrey.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Faderman, Lillian. Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present. William Morrow, 1981.
212
26 September 1914
Katharine Harris Bradley (who had shared the pen-name MF with Edith Cooper ) died of cancer at The Cottage, near Armitage in Staffordshire.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Faderman, Lillian. Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present. William Morrow, 1981.
212
Sturgeon, Mary. Michael Field. G. G. Harrap, 1922.
61
10 November 1933
Selections from the journal of MF appeared posthumously as Works and Days (title of the best-known work by the Greek poet Hesiod ). This book offered new insight into the work and life of Katharine Harris Bradley and Edith Cooper .
Blain, Virginia, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
TLS Centenary Archive Centenary Archive [1902-2012].
1658 (9 November 1933): 766

Biography

Both women had many nicknames. In letters between themselves Cooper was Pussycat, or the Persian Puss, or P., while Bradley was Simiorg, or All-Wise-Fowl, or AWF.
Ehnenn, Jill. “Come to Me”. Women’s Review of Books, No. 5, pp. 32 - 4.
33
The nicknames by which they were generally known were Michael and Henry. Katharine took the name Michael. Edith adopted Henry after her hair was cut short during her recovery from scarlet fever. They used these names to refer to each other and among their intimates.
Blain, Virginia, editor. Victorian Women Poets: A New Annotated Anthology. Longman, 2001.
208
Field, Michael, and William Rothenstein. Works and Days. Moore, Thomas Sturge and D. C. Sturge MooreEditors , J. Murray, 1933.
61
An analogous case of a shared pseudonym is that of the twentieth-century American detective-story writer Emma Lathen, also the writing name of two women, Martha Hennissart and Mary J. Latsis . The Feminist Companion says that these two won satisfied complicity from critics, who speak of the fictional EL as one, real person.
Blain, Virginia, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
under Lathen

Katharine's Birth and Family

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