Michael Field is the pen name used by aunt-niece lover duo, Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper. Katherine (1846-1914) and Edith (1862-1913) were famous under the name Michael Field for their versa dramas and poetry. Katherine was born to a tobacco merchant who died when she was 2, leaving her with independent wealth and financial and intellectual autonomy from an early age. She attended the Collège de France and Newnham College at Cambridge, then moving into her sister Emma’s marital home along with their mother a year before she passed in 1868. Emma became invalid after the birth of her second child, Amy, leaving Katherine to run the household in Kenilworth, Warwickshire, and grow affection for her niece Edith. The three women took classes at the local University College when they moved close to Bristol in the 1880’s. Katherine and Edith’s relationship developed as they fell in love and continued the rest of their lives together as co-authors.

            Bradley and Cooper started out under the names of Arran and Isla Leigh, publishing their verse drama (and first full-length play) Bellerophôn in 1881. The women switched to using Michael Field when they realized that weren’t gaining the success as females in the writing world because Victorian women writers had to use male identities to protect them from the backlash of entering the literary world that was dominated by men. They published Callirhoë, their next work, under Michael Field’s name. They were also Influenced by dead Greek poet Sappho of Lesbos, they co-authored a tribute to Sappho titled, Long Ago, (1889) which cemented their reputation. Under the name of Michael Field they wrote around 40 works together and kept a journal with 28 volumes between 1888-1914 named Works and Days. Confiding in their friend, Robert Browning, their identity was outed as he let slip their identities before his death. The women married and died within a year of one another, Edith dying from cancer in 1913, and Katherine dying from cancer 9 months later.

Information Sourced From:

Bristow, Joseph. “Michael Field in Their Time and Ours.” Tulsa Studies in Womens Literature, 2010, tswl.utulsa.edu/review-essay/michael-field-in-their-time-and-ours/. 

Further Reading:

https://michaelfielddiary.dartmouth.edu/home

 https://www.jstor.org/stable/24497077?searchText=&searchUri=&ab_segments=&searchKey=&refreqid=fastly-default%3Aa23bdf2c75ea72cb42151b3b1be66e8b

 https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/40002524.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3Aeee5bb2364af66d295e3d93723adfc10&ab_segments=&origin=&initiator=&acceptTC=1

 Image Source:

Two women, one poet: Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper. 31 Jan. 2020. Poets and Lovers: The Two Women Who Were Michael Field, The Conversation, https://theconversation.com/poets-and-lovers-the-two-women-who-were-mich....