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
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...
Contemporary Authors, Autobiography Series. Gale Research, 1984.
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
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...
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.
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
T. S. Eliot
Anne Ridler
calls this Eliot's finest play.
Ridler, Anne. Memoirs. The Perpetua Press, 2004, p. 240 pp.
125
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...
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...
EJS
published her third volume of poetry, entitled The River Steamer, and Other Poems, containing what is probably her best-known single piece, The Swan's Feet. Anne Ridler
helped her to achieve this publication.
British Library Catalogue.
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.
Timeline
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.
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...