“Michael Field” was the shared pseudonym of English writers Katharine Harris Bradley (1846-1914) and Edith Emma Cooper (1862-1913), aunt and niece who collaborated in the writing of thirty plays, eleven books of poetry and a thirty-volume journal of their life. They lived together for forty-eight years and evidence indicates that they were lovers for much of that time (see in particular Emma Donoghue's excellent study,
We Are Michael Field, 1998). As they wrote in one of their most famous poems entitled “It was deep April and the morn” (1893), “My Love and I took hands and swore,/ Against the world, to be/ Poets and lovers ever more”.
Katharine was born in Birmingham, the daughter of Charles Bradley, a tobacco manufacturer who died when she was just two years old, and his
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Citation: Avery, Simon. "Michael Field". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 13 June 2003 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1521, accessed 21 November 2024.]
