Anne Ridler

30 July 1912 - 15 October 2001

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

Milestones

30 July 1912

Anne Bradby (later AR ) was born at Rugby in Warwickshire, at School Field, one of the houses of Rugby School , late in the evening of the last day of the summer term.

Ridler, Anne. Memoirs. The Perpetua Press, p. 240 pp.

1943

AR called The Nine Bright Shiners after a series of poems it contains, whose title comes from the well-known folk-song Green Grow the Rushes O, but here refers to the nine months of pregnancy.

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.

British Book News. British Council.

(1944): 81

British Book News. British Council.

(1945): 33

15 October 2001

AR died of cancer of the pancreas at the age of eighty-nine in Oxford.

Though an obituary gave the date of her death as 16 October, her own posthumously-completed Memoirs and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography give the 15th.

Ridler, Anne. Memoirs. The Perpetua Press, p. 240 pp.

prelims

Potts, Robert. “Anne Ridler”. Guardian Unlimited.

Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

Ridler, Anne. Memoirs. The Perpetua Press, p. 240 pp.

prelims

Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

31 December 2004

AR 's Memoirs were posthumously published; she had been working on them until illness intervened, and the closing pages were revised by her from conversations taped by her son Ben.

Blackwell’s Online Bookshop. http://Bookshop.Blackwell.co.uk.

Ridler, Anne. Memoirs. The Perpetua Press, p. 240 pp.

title-page, prelims, 213

Biography

Birth and Family

30 July 1912

Anne Bradby (later AR ) was born at Rugby in Warwickshire, at School Field, one of the houses of Rugby School , late in the evening of the last day of the summer term.

Ridler, Anne. Memoirs. The Perpetua Press, p. 240 pp.