'Michael Field' (1884???1914) was the pseudonym of two women, the aunt and niece Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper, who lived and wrote together as 'lovers'. The large oeuvre contains poems, dramas, and a vast diary. Marion Thain recounts the development of a fascinating and idiosyncratic poetic persona that, she argues, itself became a self-reflexive study in aestheticism. The constructed life and work of 'Michael Field' is used here to deepen and complicate our understanding of many of the most distinctive aesthetic debates of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries; a process unified by the recurring engagement with theories of time and history that structures this book. This analysis of poetry, aestheticism and the fin de si??cle, through the performance of 'Michael Field', has implications that reach far beyond an understanding of one poet's work. Scholars of both Victorian and modernist literature will learn much from this innovative and compelling study.

As a study of lyric poetry, in English, from the early modern period to the present, this book explores one of the most ancient and significant art forms in Western culture as it emerges in its various modern incarnations. Combining a much-needed historicisation of the concept of lyric with an aesthetic and formal focus, this collaboration of period-specialists offers a new cross-historical approach. Through eleven chapters, spanning more than four centuries, the book provides readers with both a genealogical framework for the understanding of lyric poetry within any particular period, and a necessary context for more general discussion of the nature of genre.

'Michael Field' (1884-1914) was the pseudonym of two women, the aunt and niece Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper, who lived and wrote together as 'lovers'. The large oeuvre contains poems, dramas, and a vast diary. Marion Thain recounts the development of a fascinating and idiosyncratic poetic persona, which became a self-reflexive study in aestheticism. The constructed life and work of 'Michael Field' is used here to deepen and complicate our understanding of many of the most distinctive aesthetic debates of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; a process unified by the recurring engagement with theories of time and history that structures this book. This analysis of poetry, aestheticism and the fin de siecle, through the performance of 'Michael Field', has implications that reach far beyond an understanding of one poet's work. Scholars of both Victorian and modernist literature will learn much from this innovative and compelling study.

Lyric poetry's response to a crisis of relevance in Victorian ModernityThis study explores lyric poetry's response to a crisis of relevance in Victorian Modernity, offering an analysis of literature usually elided by studies of the modern formation of the genre and uncovering previously unrecognized discourses within it. Setting the focal aestheticist poetry (c. 1860 to 1914) within much broader historical, theoretical and aesthetic frames, it speaks to those interested in Victorian and modernist literature and culture, but also to a burgeoning audience of the 'new lyric studies'. The six case studies introduce fresh poetic voices as well as giving innovative analyses of canonical writers (such as D. G. Rossetti, Ezra Pound, A. C. Swinburne).Key FeaturesChallenges and transforms existing narratives of the modern formation of the 'lyric' genre through engagement with a body of work that larger-scale genre histories elideOffers innovative analysis of aestheticist poetry from the 1860s to the early years of the twentieth centuryProvides three fresh theoretical frames to examine the relationship between poetry and modernityIncludes case studies featuring a range of literary figures such as D. G. Rossetti, Alice Meynell, Thomas Hardy, Michael Field, Arthur Symons, A. C. Swinburne and Ezra Pound

As a study of lyric poetry, in English, from the early modern period to the present, this book explores one of the most ancient and significant art forms in Western culture as it emerges in its various modern incarnations. Combining a much-needed historicisation of the concept of lyric with an aesthetic and formal focus, this collaboration of period-specialists offers a new cross-historical approach. Through eleven chapters, spanning more than four centuries, the book provides readers with both a genealogical framework for the understanding of lyric poetry within any particular period, and a necessary context for more general discussion of the nature of genre.