The day before she died, CM
gave Alida Monro
a cherished copy of her poem Fin de Fête, the one transcribed in the British Library by Thomas Hardy
.
Monro, Alida, and Charlotte Mew. “Charlotte Mew—A Memoir”. Collected Poems of Charlotte Mew, Gerald Duckworth, 1953, p. vii - xx.
xii
Family and Intimate relationships
Charlotte Mew
CM
lived with her sister and mother for most of her life. According to her friend Alida Monro
, the siblings treated their mother as if she were a naughty child,
Monro, Alida, and Charlotte Mew. “Charlotte Mew—A Memoir”. Collected Poems of Charlotte Mew, Gerald Duckworth, 1953, p. vii - xx.
ix
sometimes sending her...
Friends, Associates
Charlotte Mew
CM
attended a Poetry Bookshop
reading in Bloomsbury at the invitation of Alida Klementaski
(later wife of Harold Monro
), who greatly admired her work.
Warner, Val. “New Light on Charlotte Mew”. PN Review, Vol.
24
, No. 1, 1997, pp. 43-7.
46
Monro, Alida, and Charlotte Mew. “Charlotte Mew—A Memoir”. Collected Poems of Charlotte Mew, Gerald Duckworth, 1953, p. vii - xx.
vii
Stanford, Donald E., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 19. Gale Research, 1983.
310
Leisure and Society
Charlotte Mew
Alida Monro
describes CM
as very small (under five feet tall) and slight. She always wore a double-breasted tweed jacket with a velvet collar. She smoked hand-rolled cigarettes in a long cigarette holder, and often...
Material Conditions of Writing
Charlotte Mew
CM
's literary output was scant: she published only about sixty poems, many of them posthumously. According to her friend Alida Monro
, she attributed her small output to the difficulties of domestic life...
Publishing
Charlotte Mew
The printing firm usually employed by the Bookshop could not print the volume because one of their compositors, a Methodist, refused to set the poem Madeleine in Church, which he considered to be blasphemous...
Publishing
Anna Wickham
Critic Joy Grant
writes of AW
's relations with her editor, Harold Monro
, in a positive light, stressing Wickham's gratitude to Monro for not seeing her poems as symptoms of a disordered mind
qtd. in
Grant, Joy. Harold Monro and the Poetry Bookshop. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967.
123
Publishing
Charlotte Mew
CM
's Collected Poems were posthumously published by Duckworth
, with a memoir by Alida Monro
.
British Book News. British Council.
(1954): 121
Reception
Charlotte Mew
Alida Klementaski (later Monro)
read the poem and was electrified
Monro, Alida, and Charlotte Mew. “Charlotte Mew—A Memoir”. Collected Poems of Charlotte Mew, Gerald Duckworth, 1953, p. vii - xx.
vii
by it. She immediately committed it to memory, and a couple of years later repeated it to Harold Monro
, editor of the newly...
Textual Production
Charlotte Mew
The dramatic version cannot be dated, but was completed by 1913.
Warner, Val. “New Light on Charlotte Mew”. PN Review, Vol.
24
, No. 1, 1997, pp. 43-7.
44
It did not reach production in CM
's lifetime, but the BBC
presented it in 1953 as a half-hour radio drama.
Stanford, Donald E., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 19. Gale Research, 1983.
309
According...
Textual Production
Charlotte Mew
CM
's manuscripts of poems and short stories and her unpublished letters are held in the British Library
and in the Lockwood Memorial Library at SUNY Buffalo
. The librarians at Buffalo are said to...
Timeline
1 January 1913: Harold Monro opened the Poetry Bookshop at...