Adelaide Procter

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Standard Name: Procter, Adelaide
Birth Name: Adelaide Anne Procter
Indexed Name: Adelaide Procter
Pseudonym: Mary Berwick
AP 's poetry, which appeared almost exclusively in Household Words and All the Year Round, was among the most popular of the Victorian era. An active mid-Victorian feminist, she was a member of the Langham Place Circle and supporter of the Victoria Press , for which she edited the showcase annual The Victoria Regia as well as contributing journalism and poetry to the English Woman's Journal. A convert to Catholicism, much of whose oeuvre is religious poetry (at times put to the service of social protest), she was allegedly the favourite writer of the Queen and certainly one of the best-selling poets of her day. She died young, leaving only three short collections of her poetry.
Black and white photograph of a painting of Adelaide Procter by Emma Gaggiotti Richards. She is wearing a simple dark dress with long, wide sleeves, and decorative red tassels hanging down the front and back, which are connected by a rope that sits around her shoulders. Her smooth dark hair is pulled back into a simple bun. The painting has a simple dark background, which blends out to reveal unpainted board at the edges. National Portrait Gallery.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Anthologization Anne Ogle
As Ashford Owen, AO contributed An Old Woman's Story to Adelaide Procter 's Victoria Regia.
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.
Anthologization Julia Kavanagh
JK contributed essays and stories throughout her career to at least nine periodicals in Britain and one in the USA. In August 1846 she wrote offering work of various kinds to Chambers's Journal....
Cultural formation Bessie Rayner Parkes
She had become seriously interested in Secularism in 1857. Now, after attending the Congress for the Advancement of Social Science in Dublin in 1861, she became interested in the work of the Irish Sisters of Mercy
death Matilda Hays
Until recently scholars have assumed that she died about thirty years earlier than was in fact the case. Her local obituary mentioned her friendship with Procter but did not mention that she was a writer.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Dedications Emily Faithfull
The most important publication of the Victoria Press to the history of women's printing and publishing is undoubtedly The Victoria Regia (1861). This literary gift book, edited by Adelaide Procter and dedicated by permission to...
Education Hélène Barcynska
At six years old, Marguerite Jervis was sent to a small private school at Herne Bay in Kent. She was the youngest girl there, and so naughty that the headmistress suggested a boarding school...
Family and Intimate relationships Matilda Hays
Through her involvement with the Langham Place Group, MH met and became a friend of Adelaide Procter . In 1858 Procter dedicated the First Series of Legends and Lyrics to Hays, using a quotation from...
Family and Intimate relationships Annie Keary
One of these night-school students later emigrated to work for a business firm in the USA.
Keary, Annie. Letters of Annie Keary. Keary, ElizaEditor , Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1883.
7
Of all AK 's students, rich or poor, she was the one who loved learning most...
Friends, Associates Thomas Hardy
His many literary acquaintances in London included Sir Leslie Stephen , Anne Thackeray Ritchie , and Adelaide Procter .
Gittings, Robert. Young Thomas Hardy. Penguin, 1978.
274-5, 278
Friends, Associates Bessie Rayner Parkes
Beginning in 1854, BRP and Barbara Leigh Smith participated in a society called the Portfolio Club in order to exhibit and share comment on their own and other women's artistic and literary creations. Other members...
Friends, Associates Bessie Rayner Parkes
Adelaide Procter (a close friend of BRP after her conversion, as were Sarah Atkinson and Cardinal Manning ) died of tuberculosis on 2 February 1864, the year before BRP 's father also died. Parkes was...
Friends, Associates Emily Davies
When, late in life, she forbade the writing of an intimate biography but expressed her willingness that a sketch should be written, she thought such a sketch might advantageously cover both herself and Madame Bodichon...
Friends, Associates Coventry Patmore
CP 's early contacts included Alfred Tennyson , Robert Browning , Thomas Carlyle , Ralph Waldo Emerson , and John Ruskin . Later in life, he knew Gerard Manley Hopkins and Edmund Gosse . Among...
Friends, Associates Emily Faithfull
As a member of the Langham Place GroupEF counted most of the women activists of the day among her friends. Her far-flung circle of associates included Adelaide Procter and Frances Power Cobbe .
Stone, James S. Emily Faithfull: Victorian Champion of Women’s Rights. P. D. Meany, 1994.
183, 16
Friends, Associates Emily Faithfull
EF suffered in various ways as a result of the trial. The sense that she had prevaricated, at the very least, alienated many of her associates on The English Woman's Journal, including Emily Davies

Timeline

March 1858
The English Woman's Journal, a monthly magazine on the theory and practice of organised feminism, began publication in London, with financial support from Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon and others, under the editorship of...
7 July 1859
The first meeting of the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women was held in London; founding members included Anna Jameson , Emily Faithfull , Jessie Boucherett , Adelaide Procter , Bessie Rayner Parkes , Isa Craig , and Sarah Lewin .
Late 1859
The offices of The English Woman's Journal moved from Cavendish Square to 19 Langham Place, where a ladies' club was also planned.
1861
A company in Salem, Massachusetts, issued what seems to be the earliest version of a game called Authors, whose object was to collect sets of cards bearing the names of writers and the...
August 1864
The English Woman's Journal, a practical and theoretical source of organized feminism from London, merged into The Alexandra Magazine and English Woman's Journal.