Anne Barbara Ridler

OBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

(née Bradby) (30 July 1912 – 15 October 2001) was a British poet and

Faber and Faber Faber and Faber Limited, usually abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in London. Published authors and poets include T. S. Eliot (an early Faber editor and director), W. H. Auden, Margaret Storey, William Golding, Samuel B ...

editor, selecting the Faber ''A Little Book of Modern Verse'' with

T. S. Eliot Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 18884 January 1965) was a poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor.Bush, Ronald. "T. S. Eliot's Life and Career", in John A Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (eds), ''American National Biogr ...

(1941). Her ''Collected Poems'' (

Carcanet Press Carcanet Press is a publisher, primarily of poetry, based in the United Kingdom and founded in 1969 by Michael Schmidt. In 2000 it was named the '' Sunday Times'' millennium Small Publisher of the Year. History ''Carcanet'' was originally a li ...

) were published in 1994. She turned to

libretto A libretto (Italian for "booklet") is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or Musical theatre, musical. The term ''libretto'' is also sometimes used to refer to the t ...

work and verse plays; it was later in life that she earned official recognition, receiving an

in 2001.

Early life

Ridler was the daughter of

Henry Bradby Henry Christopher Bradby (28 December 1868 – 28 June 1947) was an English first-class cricketer, schoolmaster and poet. The son of Edward Bradby senior, the headmaster of Haileybury College, he was born in December 1868 at Hertford Heath, ...

, housemaster at Rugby School in Rugby, Warwickshire, England, where she was born. Her mother, Violet Bradby, born Milford, wrote popular children's stories and was the sister of Humphrey S. Milford, Publisher to the University of Oxford. One of her great-grandfathers was Charles Richard Sumner,

Bishop of Winchester The Bishop of Winchester is the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Winchester in the Church of England. The bishop's seat (''cathedra'') is at Winchester Cathedral in Hampshire. The Bishop of Winchester has always held ''ex officio'' (except dur ...

, a brother of John Bird Sumner,

Archbishop of Canterbury The archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and a principal leader of the Church of England, the ceremonial head of the worldwide Anglican Communion and the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury. The current archbishop is Justi ...

. Her uncle,

G. F. Bradby Godfrey Fox Bradby (1863–1947) was a schoolmaster at Rugby School, who also had a wide-ranging literary career. He wrote poems, novels, literary criticism and hymns. Life and career Born 1863, the son of Revd. Edward Henry Bradby (1826–1893) ...

, was the author of ''The Lanchester Tradition'' (1919), while her aunt

Barbara Bradby Lucy Barbara Hammond (née Bradby, 1873–1961) was an English social historian who researched and wrote many influential books with her husband, John Lawrence Hammond, including the ''Labourer'' trilogy about the impact of enclosure and the Ind ...

was the joint author of ''The Village Labourer'' (1911). Her cousins included Letitia Chitty, structural analytical engineer and first female fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, composer Robin Milford and the Rev. Dick Milford, vicar of the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford.

Life

Anne Bradby was educated at Downe House School and later published a biography of her headmistress, Olive Willis. After six months in Florence and Rome, she took a diploma in journalism at

King's College London King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public research university located in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of King George IV and the Duke of Wellington. In 1836, King's ...

. In 1938, she married Vivian Ridler, the future Printer to Oxford University (1958–78), but then the manager of the Bunhill Press, London, and they had two daughters and two sons. She edited ''Charles Williams: The Image of the City and other Essays'' (1958) and ''Charles Williams: Selected Writings'' (1961). A Christian and friend and correspondent of C. S. Lewis, she was on the edge of the Inklings group. Also closely associated with T. S. Eliot, she wrote a short but powerful poem, "I Who am Here Dissembled", full of allusions to images in Eliot's own poems, for the

anthology In book publishing, an anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler; it may be a collection of plays, poems, short stories, songs or excerpts by different authors. In genre fiction, the term ''anthology'' typically categ ...

''T. S. Eliot: A Symposium'' in honour of his sixtieth birthday. For a short time in the 1940s, Ridler was also a successful verse dramatist, writing such plays as ''Cain'' (1943) and ''Shadow Factory: A Nativity Play'' (1945). ''Poetry: A Magazine of Verse'' awarded her in 1954 the Oscar Blumenthal Prize and in 1955 the Union League Civic and Arts Poetry Prize. In 1998 she was one of four poets who received the Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors.

References

External links

Guardian Unlimited obituary

Poetry Archive

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ridler, Anne 1912 births 2001 deaths People educated at Downe House School Alumni of King's College London English women poets Officers of the Order of the British Empire English opera librettists English women dramatists and playwrights People from Rugby, Warwickshire 20th-century English women writers Women librettists 20th-century English poets 20th-century English dramatists and playwrights