The Complete Poems

by Charlotte Mew

Genres: Poetry

160 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2000

About the author

Charlotte Mary Mew was a modernist British poet. Mew's father, architect Frederick Mew, died in 1898 without making adequate provision for his family; two of her siblings suffered from mental illness, and were committed to institutions, and three others died in early childhood leaving Charlotte, her mother and her sister, Anne. Charlotte and Anne made a pact never to marry for fear of passing on insanity to their children.

In 1894, Mew succeeded in getting a short story into The Yellow Book, but wrote very little poetry at this time. Her first collection of poetry, The Farmer's Bride, was published in 1916. Mew gained the patronage of several literary figures, notably Thomas Hardy, who called her the best woman poet of her day, Virginia Woolf, who said she was "very good and quite unlike anyone else," and Siegfried Sassoon. She obtained a small Civil List pension with the aid of Cockerell, Hardy, John Masefield and Walter de la Mare. This helped ease her financial difficulties.

After the death of her sister, she descended into a deep depression, and was admitted to a nursing home where she eventually committed suicide by drinking Lysol. Mew is buried in Hampstead Cemetery.

Reviews

[Maddie · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars for the poetry. 1 star for the introduction that has no mention of Charlotte Mew’s queerness 💔

[Chiffchaff Birdy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I only came across Charlotte Mew as a result of a binge-fest of reading Penelope Fitzgerald, who was a fan. I must say however that the poems were beautiful and moving, so I was very pleased to come across her work and her fascinating (and tragic) life story. She should be much better known generally.

[J.S.A. Lowe · Rating 5 out of 5]

We must arise and go:
The world is cold without
And dark and hedged about
With mystery and enmity and doubt,
But we must go
Though yet we do not know
Who called, or what marks we shall leave upon the snow.

[Max Scratchmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a great fan of poetry and was recently asked who was the world's greatest poet.

That's a difficult one! To name just a fraction of the best there's Ogden Nash, Lewis Carroll, Elizabeth Smart, Harry Graham, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath, all superb wordsmiths.

But, honesty, head and shoulders above them all is Charlotte Mew.

Read this book and know poetry.

I just keep rereading it and finding new messages and nuances.

[Nicky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this for my Women's Poetry class. Another poet that I'd never heard of at all before the class. I think I liked the one we read in the first class, The Call, the best. But I enjoyed all of them, and the short story/prose-poem, "The Wheat", is interesting -- her writing has a nice rhythm to it.