This collection of scholarly work sheds new light on the mysterious collaborative poet ‘Michael Field’, the pseudonym of Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper, an aunt and niece who lived and wrote together for the majority of their lives under this shared male pseudonym in the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The book contains chapters from thirty-six scholars from around the world with expertise in Victorian poetry, decadent and aesthetic literature and other aspects relevant to Michael Field’s fascinating work.
The volume illuminates different facets of Bradley and Cooper’s lives, from their early biography, their shared diary Works and Days and the development of the Michael Field pseudonym, through their connections to other fin-de-siècle writers, such as Oscar Wilde, and their continuing relevance to contemporary topics such as ecology, disability, queer and transgender identities.
Professor Sarah Parker said: “Michael Field in Context is the most detailed, comprehensive collection of essays on this endlessly intriguing writer – or perhaps should I say writers. It’s been fascinating to bring these chapters together, and I hope this volume will open up Michael Field for a whole new generation of students and scholars.”
The book is now available from Cambridge University Press. A launch event will follow in London in November 2025.
Read Professor Sarah Parker’s recent journal article on Michael Field (co-authored with Dr Frankie Dytor) published in the Cambridge University Press journal Victorian Literature and Culture.