We Are Michael Field (Outlines)

Rating:
Summary: A delightful slice of subversive lesbian history
Review: Michael Field was a successful, well-regarded poet and playright in Victorian England... until critics discovered that "Michael Field" was a pseudonym used by not one, but TWO women writing collaboratively. What even the suddenly-lukewarm critics didn't appreciate - not only were "the Michaels" (as they were known to friends) aunt and niece, but they were also lovers and partners in an extraordinay personal and artistic life. They wrote eleven volumes of poetry and thirty historical tragedies, but perhaps their most fascinating work was the diary that the two women shared for a quarter of a century. Novelist Emma Donaghue has done a marvelous bit of literary biographical research in this revealing look at the lives, loves, and eccentricities of Katherine Bradley (1846-1914) and her niece Edith Cooper (1862-1913).

Rating:
Summary: Who Was Michael Field?
Review: This is a good short introductory biography about two wealthy spinsterish Victorian women, an aunt and her niece, who were lovers and lived together writing poetry *together* under a single pseudonym. Their poetry was highly acclaimed in their day and published under the masculine pseudonym "Michael Field". Unfortunately, this eccentric pair and their writings are no longer remembered today and little has been known about them until this book was published, bringing to light rare information culled from unpublished journals and letters. This is the story of two unusual and extraordinary artists who did everything together, including write with each other by day and sleep with each other by night. They had likeable and unlikeable sides to their perosnality and not all of their views and attitudes would be acceptable in today's more liberal times. But they proved, above all, that they were human, and their talent deserves a second glance, a second chance.

David Rehak
author of "Poems From My Bleeding Heart"

Rating:
Summary: Victorian Lesbians
Review: This is an excellent introductory biography of Michael Field. There is not much written about these two remarkable women writing under a pseudonym in the late-Victorian period, but this book broadly covers all of the bases. The major negative from a scholarly point of view is that nothing is foot or endnoted, making discovering exactly where Donoghue came up with certain information something of a guessing game. Still, this book is an excellent, easy, interesting, and detailed read.