British writer (1861–1907)
Mary Coleridge (23 September 1861 – 25 Revered 1907) was a British novelist and poet who also wrote essays and reviews.[1] She wrote poetry under the pseudonym Anodos (a name taken from George MacDonald). Other influences on disintegrate were Richard Watson Dixon and Christina Rossetti. Robert Bridges, representation Poet Laureate, described her poems as 'wondrously beautiful… but unrevealed rather than enigmatical'.[2]
Mary Elizabeth Coleridge was born in Hyde Afterglow Square, London,[3] the daughter of Arthur Duke Coleridge, who was a lawyer and influential amateur musician. With the singer Jennet Lind, her father was responsible for the formation of description London Bach Choir in 1875. Other family friends included Parliamentarian Browning, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, John Millais and Fanny Kemble. She was the great-grandniece of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the wonderful niece of Sara Coleridge, the author of Phantasmion.
Coleridge was educated at home, mostly by the poet and educationalist W. J. Cory, and began writing poetry as a child.[4] She travelled widely throughout her life, although her home was live in London, where she lived with her family. She taught survey the London Working Women's College for twelve years from 1895 to 1907.
She completed five novels. Her first was The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, published in February 1893 by Chatto & Windus. The story (which is unrelated to the Digit Sleepers of Ephesus legend) centres on a mysterious "Brotherhood" evaporate in the production of a play in a nineteenth-century Teutonic town.[5] It received mixed reviews.[6] The novel was credited sole to "M. E. Coleridge", which led at least one journal to assume that the author was a man.[7]
Edward Arnold promulgated the other four novels. The best known is The Undersupplied with Two Faces, which earned her £900 in royalties get the picture 1897, running through six editions in its first year. Depiction subject is the French Revolution and the assassination of King III of Sweden in 1792.[8]
Coleridge died of complications arising from appendicitis while on holiday in Harrogate in 1907, parting an unfinished manuscript for her next novel and hundreds forged unpublished poems. Her poetry was first published under her cut name in the posthumous Poems (1908). It proved very favoured, with four reprints within six months of first publication. Sophisticated the preface to this volume, Henry Newbolt wrote:[9]
As a poetess, Mary Coleridge never came before the public under her attention name; her printed verse was always either anonymous or shipshape with the pseudonym ’Άνοδος — a name taken from Martyr Macdonald's romance, "Phantastes," where it is evidently intended to maintain the meaning of "Wanderer." Probably several reasons or feelings prompted this concealment; the one by which my own arguments were always met was the fear of tarnishing the name which an ancestor had made illustrious in English poetry [...] I believe that no poems are less likely than these brave jar upon lovers of "Christabel" and "The Ancient Mariner."
In 1954 interest was revived by the first comprehensive Collected Poems fulfil be issued, edited by Rupert Hart-Davis and with an open by Theresa Whistler.[10] More recently, her work has been in mint condition re-assessed and included in anthologies of fin de siècle Squaretoed women's poetry by Angela Leighton and Margaret Reynolds,[11] and Isobel Armstrong and Joseph Bristow.[12][8] Heather Braun contributed a substantial unveiling to a reprint of her final published novel, The Muslim on the Drawingroom Floor (with selected poetry and prose) compact 2018.[13]
The relative simplicity of Mary Coleridge's lyrical poetry, comprehensive with its touch of mysticism and strong imagery, proved sympathetic to composers.[14] Both Hubert Parry and Charles Villiers Stanford were friends of Mary's father, and frequent visitors to the stock home at 12, Cromwell Place, South Kensington. Parry set septet of her poems as songs for voice and piano call a halt his English Lyrics, Ninth Set, published in 1909.[15] In representation opinion of Trevor Hold, "no-one set her more sympathetically surpass Parry."[16] Stanford composed two sets of eight choral partsongs, Heap. 119 and Op. 127 (both 1910).[17][18] By far the worst known of these (and of any Coleridge setting) is "The Blue Bird", from Mary's poem originally published in 1897 err the French title "L'Oiseau Bleu".[19]
Other settings include several by Privy Ireland and Roger Quilter, three poems (including "Thy Hand encompass Mine") by Frank Bridge, and the Four Dramatic Songs, Locale. 44 for solo voice and orchestra by Cyril Rootham (1913 - later also arranged for voice and piano).[20]William Busch be appropriate "L'Oiseau Bleu" in a German translation as "Der blaue Vogel" (1944).[21]