Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Charlotte Mew
-
Standard Name: Mew, Charlotte
Birth Name: Charlotte Mary Mew
Nickname: Lotti
Pseudonym: M.
Charlotte Mew is best known and regarded as an early twentieth century poet, though she also published a few short stories and essays. Her poems, often dramatic monologues, are haunted by unrequited love, the renunciation of passion, and death. Subtle experiment with form and metre is discernible in their unusually long lines, the frequent use of monosyllables, mixed metres, and repeated, irregular rhymes. CM
's work was admired by several poets of her day, notably Thomas Hardy
, with whom she shares an affinity for harsh rural settings and socially isolated characters. Despite the enthusiasm of both initial and recent critics, her poetic achievements remain under-recognised.
Williams-Ellis divided her text into five sections according to audience, respectively written For All, For Philosophers, For Missionaries, For Critics, and For Readers. The last section consists of short studies...
death
Anna Wickham
Although AW
's suicide came with little warning, she showed, in an unfinished autobiography written more than ten years earlier, a portentous awareness of a tradition of suicide among women poets: There have been few...
Textual Production
Michelene Wandor
Other radio plays that MW
has written about women writers include An Uncommon Love, based on Hannah Cullwick
's relationship with Arthur Munby
, A Consoling Blue, about Jean Rhys
's writing of...
Wisker, Alistair et al. “Introduction: A Literary Appreciation”. Doreen Wallace, 1897-1989: Writer and Social Campaigner, Edwin Mellen Press, p. xvii - xxi.
xviii
Friends, Associates
G. B. Stern
GBS
moved in literary and artistic circles in London before the first World War. She visited Rebecca West
at Leigh-on-Sea in Essex in September 1917 during a week of air-raids.
Stern, G. B. Monogram. Chapman and Hall.
268ff
Several decades later she...
Friends, Associates
May Sinclair
MS
's friendship with Charlotte Mew
(whom she met through Catharine Dawson Scott in spring 1913) is still the subject of debate and disagreement among commentators. Mew kept the letters she received from her, but...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
May Sinclair
According to biographer Suzanne Raitt
, MS
sometimes used aspects of her own experience in her stories. The Pin-Prick, 1915, about a young woman so sensitive that she kills herself in response to a...
Textual Features
May Sinclair
Like May Cannan
(different though Cannan's idiom is), MS
continued to express her regret over her exclusion from the via dolorosa of the war: like an unloved hand laid on a beating heart / Our...
Textual Features
May Sinclair
Defending H.D. against Harold Monro
's criticism, MS
insisted that the Imagist style was unique for sheer emotion, for clean-cut and perfect beauty.
Raitt, Suzanne. May Sinclair: A Modern Victorian. Clarendon Press.
196
Nevertheless, she hedged her bets by telling Charlotte Mew
that her...
Textual Features
Catharine Amy Dawson Scott
The Headland was strongly influenced by the writing of Dorothy Richardson
, whom Dawson Scott had met in Cornwall during the first world war. Its story takes three chapters for three cataclysmic days. The protagonist...
Friends, Associates
Catharine Amy Dawson Scott
Charlotte Mew
and CADS
were close friends, despite Mew's sometimes anti-social behaviour. Dawson Scott tried hard to place Mew's poetry and to make literary connections for her.
Watts, Marjorie, and Frances King. Mrs. Sappho. Duckworth.
55
Friends, Associates
Catharine Amy Dawson Scott
CADS
's biographer and daughter speculates that her friendship with Mew
ended around this time, after Sinclair reportedly accused Mew (who is thought to have been bisexual) of bothering her. Dawson Scott wrote in her...
Textual Features
Lady Margaret Sackville
In her title-poem LMS
asks, Dare I believe / That from so numb, So parched a source / New streams may come?
Sackville, Lady Margaret. Return to Song, and Other Poems. Williams and Norgate.
5
She writes that the rhythmic form of long, sweeping lines that she...