During the Great War, Charles Ricketts predicted that in the distant future, the poems of Michael Field (Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper) would attract more readers than in their own time. He made this prediction in a letter to Sydney Cockerell, who was at the time the director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, where part of their legacy had found its way.
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| Works and Days. Extracts from the Journals of Michael Field (1933) |
In a letter dated 6 June 1917, Ricketts wrote:
[...] believe me, when we all come into our own, Michael Field will be remembered when the Thompsons, Addington Symon[d]s etc are forgotten.[British Library Add MS 52746, f 101]
Although Francis Thompson (1859-1907) made the newspapers ten years ago when the building where he lived between 1864 and 1885 - marked with a blue plaque - collapsed, no monographs on his work have been published in the last half century.
Poet and literary critic John Addington Symonds (1840-1893) is best remembered for his book The Renaissance in Italy (1875-1886) and has made a regular reappearance as an early advocate of homosexuality. Following a biography in 1964, his memoirs were published in 1986 and a critical edition appeared in 2016, while a recent study, The Passions of John Addington Symonds by Shane Butler, was made public in 2022.However, a stack of no fewer than fifteen books about Michael Field have appeared since the end of the last century, not counting the dozens of articles.
It did take a while before academic interest in Michael Field blossomed. A study by Mary Sturgeon (Michael Field, 1922) and a selection from the diaries (Works and Days, 1933) were not immediately followed by a stream of publications about the two women. In the 1970s Paul Delaney published selections from Ricketts's letters to Michael Field. At the end of the twentieth century, the studies on Michael Field gained momentum, thanks in part to the efforts of three individual researchers: Ivor Treby, Emma Donoghue and Marion Twain.
Treby published his archival overview The Michael Field Catalogue in 1998, while Donoghue wrote a concise biography: We Are Michael Field.
Treby then produced a series of collections of Field's poems: A Shorter Shīrazād: 101 poems of Michael Field (1999), Music and Silence (2000) and Uncertain Rain (2002). A third researcher, Marion Thain, published a brief biography and study of the poems: Michael Field and Poetic Identity (2000). Thain became the consultant editor of Michael Field and Fin-de-Siècle Culture and Society. The Journals, 1868-1914, and Correspondence of Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper from the British Library, London (Add. Mss 46776-46804, 45851-45856 & 46866-46897). A Listing and Guide to the Microfilm Collection (2003). The publication was, of course, a response to the generally felt need for broad access to the manuscripts to facilitate further research.
A fresh selection of 'leaves from the journal and letters of Michael Field' was published by Treby in 2006: Binary Star. Thain continued her research with the monograph Poetry, Aestheticism and the Fin de Siècle (2007), a discussion of four of Michael Field's books of poetry.
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| A selection of books about Michael Field (1998-2024) |
After that, the field of research was opened up and publications appeared comprising letter and diary editions and discussions of the works:
- Michael Field and Their World, edited by Margaret D. Stetz and Cheryl A. Wilson (2007): 23 essays;
- The Fowl and the Pussycat. The Letters of Michael Field, 1876-1909, edited by Sharon Bickle (2008): a first scholarly of the correspondence of Bradley and Cooper;
- Michael Field, The Poet. Published and Manuscript Materials, edited by Marion Twain and Ana Parejo Vadillo (2009): a collection of poems, diaries and letters.
- Michael Field. Decadent Moderns, edited by Sarah Parker and Ana Parego Vadillo (2019): 11 essays;
- Michael Field, For That Moment Only and Other Prose Works, edited by Alex Murray and Sarah Parker: first publication of Field's stories and short prose;
- Carolyn Dever, Chains of Love and Beauty. The Diary of Michael Field (2022): an in-depth study of the diaries;
- Jill Ehnenn, Michael Field's Revisionary Poetics (2023);
- One Soul We Divided. A Critical Edition of the Diary of Michael Field, edited by Carolyn Dever (2024)
Meanwhile, under the direction of Marion Thain, an online transcription of the Michael Field diaries is in progress, accompanied by images of the original handwritten pages, since 2021 hosted by Dartmouth University: The Diaries of Michael Field.
