Charlotte Mew: Collected Poems and Prose

by Charlotte Mew, Val Warner (Editor)

Described by Thomas Hardy as "the best living woman poet", discovered and published by Harold Monro at The Poetry Bookshop, Charlotte Mew (1869-1928) was admired by Virginia Woolf, Siegfried Sassoon, Edith Sitwell, John Masefield, Vita Sackville-West and Ezra Pound.

Gifted and original, with a voice quite different from contemporary Georgians, she was a woman of vivid and formidable personality but led a secluded life, dying tragically by her own hand at the age of 49.

Now, for the first time, Charlotte Mew is revealed as a prose writer of exceptional quality, for her stories and essays, never before collected, have been brought together from 'The Yellow Book', 'Temple Bar', 'The Englishwoman', and 'New Statesman' and other publications of the day. This collection also includes her only play, The China Bowl, taken from the BBC archives. As well as all previously published poems there are seven that until the appearance of this book remained unpublished or uncollected.

The writing of Charlotte Mew focuses on women but profoundly illuminates the complexities of all human experience. Powerful, intense, unsentimental, yet imbued with a natural gaiety, her complete work is here brought to their audience for which she was writing decades ago.

Genres: Poetry

446 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1982

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

[sof · Rating 4 out of 5]

beautiful

[Shannan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up this book because Mew's poem The Farmer's Bride haunts me and I love it. I also learned from Perry that she committed suicide. So naturally I was interested! This biography however was just too hefty and intricate for me to enjoy, and I ended up reading her collected poems, a few chapters about her death, and thats all.
Charlotte Mew's poems were sensitive, tragic, and sometimes flippant. But the feelings her poems emote...wow...I related.