Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Hope Mirrlees
-
Standard Name: Mirrlees, Hope
Birth Name: Helen Hope Mirrlees
Much of the sparse information currently available on HM
focuses on her lasting personal relationship with eminent scholar Jane Harrison
rather than her own body of writing, which includes poetry, novels, and biographies (published and unpublished). But as critic Mary Beard
notes: To see Mirrlees only in the context of Jane Harrison . . . is to underrate her. She is one of those writers forever on the brink of being discovered (in the 1990s as much as in the 1920s) . . . . and like all such forgotten writers, she is an uncomfortable challenge to the arbitrariness of literary fame.
Beard, Mary. The Invention of Jane Harrison. Harvard University Press, 2000.
Before her death LOM
named three literary executors, including her friend Hope Mirrlees
. Her literary estate consisted primarily of letters, journals, and her drafted memoirs.
Seymour, Miranda. Ottoline Morrell: Life on the Grand Scale. Farrar Straus Giroux, 1992.
JEH
began a close academic and personal relationship with Cambridge
classical scholar R. A. Neil
. Her later companion Hope Mirrlees
suggested that at the time of Neil's death in 1901 these two were engaged.
Robinson, Annabel. The Life and Work of Jane Ellen Harrison. Oxford University Press, 2001.
126-7, 141-2
Family and Intimate relationships
Jane Ellen Harrison
Classics lecturer JEH
met her student and later close companion, Hope Mirrlees
, at Newnham College
, Cambridge
.
Robinson, Annabel. The Life and Work of Jane Ellen Harrison. Oxford University Press, 2001.
235
Fictionalization
Madeleine de Scudéry
MS
was highly influential for women writers in English. Many of the women who wrote during the eighteenth century had grown up on her romances. Charlotte Lennox
may appear to be stabbing MS
in the...
Friends, Associates
T. S. Eliot
Mirrlees
was a Roman Catholic
convert of some years' standing at the time of her closest contact with Eliot. John Hayward
was a talented, acerbic, clubbable scholar crippled by muscular dystrophy.
Ackroyd, Peter. T.S. Eliot. Hamish Hamilton, 1984.
274-5
Friends, Associates
Virginia Woolf
Since VW
moved in a variety of social circles, her range of literary acquaintance was very wide. Her associates included such established, celebrated writers as Thomas Hardy and Henry James
, popular authors such as...
Potterism was both popular and favourably reviewed. For years it remained RM
's best-known work. She later felt it was rather jejune and too much of a tract. I feel I hammered away with a...
Residence
T. S. Eliot
Back in London in 1933 TSE
lived in several places before moving into rooms in the presbytery attached to St Stephen's Church in Gloucester Road. He was still there in the first year of...
Residence
Jane Ellen Harrison
Though still attached to Newnham College
, Cambridge
, JEH
settled for some time in Paris with her former student Hope Mirrlees
.
Robinson, Annabel. The Life and Work of Jane Ellen Harrison. Oxford University Press, 2001.
265
Residence
Jane Ellen Harrison
After leaving Cambridge
permanently, scholar JEH
settled in Paris with Hope Mirrlees
, who had by now become known as a poet.
Robinson, Annabel. The Life and Work of Jane Ellen Harrison. Oxford University Press, 2001.
287-8
Residence
Jane Ellen Harrison
JEH
and Hope Mirrlees
left Paris to live in London, where they settled at 11 Mecklenburgh Street.
Robinson, Annabel. The Life and Work of Jane Ellen Harrison. Oxford University Press, 2001.
302
Textual Production
Jane Ellen Harrison
During the later years of her life JEH
returned to her childhood fascination with Russia, fostering this interest with critical work on various aspects of the Russian language and culture.
Harrison, Jane Ellen. Reminiscences of a Student’s Life. Hogarth Press, 1925.
