Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Anne Ridler
-
Standard Name: Ridler, Anne
Birth Name: Anne Barbara Bradby
Married Name: Anne Barbara Ridler
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, 1965, pp. 144-53.
EJS
has been much anthologised: in Geoffrey Grigson
's Poetry of the Present: An Anthology of the Thirties and After, 1949, and more recently in collections edited by Fleur Adcock
, Philip Larkin
,...
Education
Constance Naden
CN
received her first education at home, where her grandmother
taught her to read using the method of Reading without Tears (a book by Favell Lee Bevan, later Mrs Mortimer
), whereby whole words were...
Family and Intimate relationships
Lucy Walford
Catherine Sinclair
, a children's writer and novelist, was LW
's great-aunt (the younger sister, by a second marriage, of her maternal grandmother). LW praised Sinclair's work in Recollections of a Scottish Novelist: Catherine...
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Jennings
She had a remarkably catholic talent for friendship. During her student days she became a friend of Philip Larkin
and Kingsley Amis
. Her correspondents at this and later periods of her life included her...
Contemporary Authors, Autobiography Series. Gale Research, 1984–2024, Numerous volumes.
9: 284
Friends, Associates
Anne Stevenson
AS
's close friends have included many well-known late twentieth-century names in British poetry: Frances Horovitz
, whom she mourned in a number of poems, a trio of drinking friends in Glasgow (Tom Leonard
Friends, Associates
E. J. Scovell
Her friends included a fellow Oxford poet, Anne Ridler
(who later wrote her entry for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), and a younger novelist, Maggie Gee
(whose brother married EJS
's niece), and...
Intertextuality and Influence
Catherine Sinclair
Holiday House was an important book for one of CS
's great-nieces, who became the popular writer Lucy Walford
, and was among the favourite childhood reading of poet and playwright Anne Ridler
.
Walford, Lucy. Recollections of a Scottish Novelist. Williams and Norgate, 1910, xi, 317 pp.
18-19
Leisure and Society
William Empson
Anne Ridler
later remembered him at a poetry reading in October 1943 at the Wigmore Hall in London, held in support of Aid to China
and of the National Council for Women
. While...
Literary responses
Philip Larkin
Ten years after his first collection appeared, this one at last brought PL
admiration and respect. The Times Literary Supplement called him a poet of quite exceptional importance, and The Times picked the volume as...
Literary responses
T. S. Eliot
Anne Ridler
calls this Eliot's finest play.
Ridler, Anne. Memoirs. The Perpetua Press, 2004, p. 240 pp.
125
Occupation
T. S. Eliot
Eliot now left Lloyds Bank
. His most significant work apart from his own writing was his long career in publishing, which made him a mentor to a whole series of distinguished authors. From late...
KR
's poetry, which focusses on archetypal forms of being, is influenced by Swedenborg
and the Neo-Platonists. She was also fascinated by the avant-garde movements of her era: Bloomsbury Humanism, Freud
ianism, Wittgenstein
's and...
Timeline
1907: Educationalist Olive Willis founded a school...
Building item
1907
Educationalist Olive Willis
founded a school for girls at Downe House in Kent, formerly occupied by Charles Darwin
. Downe House School
began with one pupil, five teachers, and no financial backing.
Ridler, Anne. Memoirs. The Perpetua Press, 2004, p. 240 pp.
179
Early 1936: The Faber Book of Modern Verse, edited by...
Writing climate item
Early 1936
The Faber Book of Modern Verse, edited by Michael Roberts
(who was put forward for this task by T. S. Eliot
), set out to define the modern movement, not just chronologically but according...
Texts
Ridler, Anne. A Dream Observed, And Other Poems. Poetry, 1941.
Ridler, Anne. A Matter of Life and Death. Faber and Faber, 1959.
Ridler, Anne. A Measure of English Poetry. Perpetua, 1991.
Ridler, Anne. Cain. Nicholson and Watson, 1943.
Ridler, Anne. Collected Poems. Carcanet, 1994.
da Ponte, Lorenzo, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Cosi fan tutte Libretto. Translator Ridler, Anne, Perpetua, 1987.
Ridler, Anne. Dies Natalis. Perpetua, 1980.
Ridler, Anne. Henry Bly, and Other Plays. Faber and Faber, 1950.
Ridler, Anne. Memoirs. The Perpetua Press, 2004, p. 240 pp.
Ridler, Anne. New and Selected Poems. Faber and Faber, 1988.
Ridler, Anne, editor. Notes on the Taliessin Poems of Charles Williams. Charles Williams Society, 1991.
Ridler, Anne. Olive Willis and Downe House. John Murray, 1967.
Ridler, Anne. “Open House”. Cathedrals, Winchester College Printing Society, 1979.
Ridler, Anne. Poems. Oxford University Press, 1939.
Jennings, Elizabeth, and Anne Ridler. Poems. Fantasy Press, 1953.
Ridler, Anne, editor. Poems and some Letters of James Thomson. Centaur, 1963.
Ridler, Anne. Selected Poems. Macmillan, 1961.
Ridler, Anne, editor. Shakespeare Criticism 1919-1935. Oxford University Press, 1936.
Ridler, Anne. Some Time After. Faber and Faber, 1972.
Ridler, Anne. The Golden Bird. Faber and Faber, 1951.
Ridler, Anne, and John Piper. The Jesse Tree. Lyrebird Press, 1972.
Eliot, T. S. The Little Book of Modern Verse. Editor Ridler, Anne, Faber and Faber, 1941.
Ridler, Anne. The Nine Bright Shiners. Faber and Faber, 1943.
Monteverdi, Claudio. The Operas of Monteverdi. Translator Ridler, Anne, Calder, 1992.
Ridler, Anne. The Shadow Factory. Faber and Faber, 1946.