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 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....
Anthologization Anne Ogle
As Ashford Owen, AO contributed An Old Woman's Story to Adelaide Procter 's Victoria Regia.
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.
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 et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
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 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. Editor Keary, Eliza, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1883.
7
Of all AK 's students, rich or poor, she was the one who loved learning most...
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...
Friends, Associates Jessie Boucherett
Helen Blackburn recounts that JB met Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon and Adelaide Procter after casually picking up a copy of the English Woman's Journal at a railway station. She was so impressed with the contents...
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 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 Geraldine Jewsbury
GJ entered the social scene of the capital with several connections already made. Her London friends included members of the Kingsley and Rossetti families, feminist reformer Frances Power Cobbe , author John Ruskin , Samuel Carter
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 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 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

Timeline

March 1858: The English Woman's Journal, a monthly magazine...

Women writers item

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...

Building item

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 .
Stone, James S. Emily Faithfull: Victorian Champion of Women’s Rights. P. D. Meany, 1994.
42

Late 1859: The offices of The English Woman's Journal...

Women writers item

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.
Herstein, Sheila R. A Mid-Victorian Feminist: Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon. Yale University Press, 1985.
140
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

1861: A company in Salem, Massachusetts, issued...

Writing climate item

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...

Building item

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.
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.
under Anna Brownell Jameson
Doughan, David, and Denise Sanchez. Feminist Periodicals, 1855-1984. Harvester Press, 1987.
1-2

Texts

Procter, Adelaide, and Richard Doyle. A Chaplet of Verses. Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1862.
Procter, Adelaide. “A Woman’s Question”. Household Words, Vol.
17
, No. 411, p. 179.
Dickens, Charles et al. “An Introduction”. Legends and Lyrics, Fifteenth, George Bell and Sons, 1874, p. xi - xxxi.
Ogle, Anne. “An Old Woman’s Story”. The Victoria Regia, edited by Adelaide Procter, Emily Faithfull, 1861, pp. 326-32.
Procter, Adelaide. Legends and Lyrics. Bell and Daldy, 1858.
Procter, Adelaide. Legends and Lyrics. Bell and Daldy, 1861.
Procter, Adelaide et al. Legends and Lyrics. New Edition, Bell and Daldy, 1866.
Procter, Adelaide, and Charles Dickens. Legends and Lyrics. 15th ed., George Bell and Sons, 1874.
Faithfull, Emily. “Preface”. The Victoria Regia, edited by Adelaide Procter, Emily Faithfull, 1861, p. v - viii.
Procter, Adelaide, and Charles Dickens. The Poems of Adelaide A. Procter. Complete Edition, James R. Osgood, 1873.
Faithfull, Emily. The Victoria Regia. Editor Procter, Adelaide, Emily Faithfull, 1861.