Publisher's Synopsis
Charlotte Mew (1869-1928) was admired by writers as diverse as Siegfried Sassoon, Ezra Pound, Virginia Woolf and Dylan Thomas; Thomas Hardy called her 'the best living woman poet'. For decades after her suicide she was known only by a few anthology pieces. Now she is again widely recognised as a true original. Her writing has an urgency and passion that compel her to re-invent forms and prosodies to explore her complex pains and loves.
This collection reveals the full range of her work. She can be appreciated as a bravely experimental modernist, a poet of formal precision whose themes are at the heart of feminist concerns.
Val Warner's introduction provides background to Mew's life, shared with her painter sister, caring for their mother, concealing the mental illness of her brother and her other sister and her own ambivalent sexual nature. From such constraints she created powerful poetry.
