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Help create the first complete edition of the co-written diaries (1888-1914) of "Michael Field, " two women poets and lovers who wrote and lived together until their deaths.
Learn moreJournal Entries
This workflow consists mainly of diary entries by Bradley and Cooper. Vol. 1 (1868-69) was written by Bradley while a young student in France. Vol. 5 (1892) and 10 (1896) are co-written. Subject sets are continuous pages.
Letters & Miscellany
Vol. 30 (1880-1912) was created by archivists at the British Library to contain loose-leaf materials from the other volumes. The sets treat each letter as a single document. Letters are grouped by author.
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Message from the researcher
"Michael Field aspired to create beauty in all they wrote. Their diary is no exception: here Bradley and Cooper write their shared life as art, and their art as life, on pages of intimacy that they shared with the world."—Carolyn Dever, Dartmouth College
Poets & LoversAbout Poets & Lovers
The poets, dramatists, and diarists Katharine Bradley (1846-1914) and Edith Cooper (1862-1913) wrote collaboratively under the composite name "Michael Field." They were also lifelong lovers as well as aunt and niece, and considered themselves married. Their lyric poetry and historical verse-dramas are well known. Less known is the co-written diary that records their lives and literary endeavors from 1888 until their deaths. In addition to their own aesthetic response to events both contemporaneous and historically-resonant, it offers powerful historical documentation of the construction of a queer identity and chronicles the cultural life of fin-de-siècle London and Europe, detailing encounters with the leading literary and artistic figures of the period.