Charlotte Mary Mew (15 November 1869 – 24 March 1928) was an English poet whose work spans the eras of

Victorian Victorian or Victorians may refer to: 19th century * Victorian era, British history during Queen Victoria's 19th-century reign ** Victorian architecture ** Victorian house ** Victorian decorative arts ** Victorian fashion ** Victorian literature ...

poetry and

Modernism Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

Early life and education

Mew was born in

Bloomsbury Bloomsbury is a district in the West End of London. It is considered a fashionable residential area, and is the location of numerous cultural, intellectual, and educational institutions. Bloomsbury is home of the British Museum, the largest mus ...

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, daughter of the architect Frederick Mew (1833-1898), who designed

Hampstead Town Hall Hampstead Town hall is a municipal building on Haverstock Hill, Hampstead, London. It is a Grade II listed building. History The facility was commissioned by the Vestry of St John who had previously met in the offices of the local workhouse. ...

, and Anna Maria Marden (1837-1923), daughter of architect H. E. Kendall, for whom Frederick Mew had previously worked as an assistant. Frederick was the son of an innkeeper on the

Isle of Wight The Isle of Wight ( ) is a county in the English Channel, off the coast of Hampshire, from which it is separated by the Solent. It is the largest and second-most populous island of England. Referred to as 'The Island' by residents, the Isle of ...

. The marriage produced seven children. Charlotte, nicknamed Lotti by her family, attended Gower Street School, where she was greatly influenced by the school's headmistress,

Lucy Harrison Lucy Harrison (17 January 1844 – 15 May 1915) was a teacher at Bedford College School, and later founder and then head of Gower Street School for Girls and then The Mount School, York. Early life Lucy Harrison was born on 17 January 1844 in ...

, and attended lectures at

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

. The family moved to 9, Gordon Street in 1888, living in "genteel near-poverty"; her father died in 1898 without making adequate provision for his family. Two of her siblings suffered from

mental illness A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness or psychiatric disorder, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. Such features may be persistent, relapsing and remitti ...

and were committed to

institutions Institutions are humanly devised structures of rules and norms that shape and constrain individual behavior. All definitions of institutions generally entail that there is a level of persistence and continuity. Laws, rules, social conventions a ...

, 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. Mew appears at any rate to have been homosexual; according to Penelope Fitzgerald's account in Mew's entry in the ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', "'Passed' appeared in the second volume of the Yellow Book ... It was through the Yellow Book that she met and was deeply attracted to its dashing assistant editor, Ella D'Arcy. In 1902 she went to meet Ella in Paris, but the visit was a bitter disappointment. Ten years later she fell in love with the novelist May Sinclair, and apparently chased her into the bedroom, where she was humiliatingly rejected. Her divided nature made these emotional disasters particularly painful because her ladylike side ... totally disapproved of them" One scholar believes that Charlotte was "almost certainly chastely

lesbian A lesbian is a Homosexuality, homosexual woman.Zimmerman, p. 453. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate n ...

".) Mew had a strong sense of style: her friend and editor Alida Monro remembers her wearing distinctive red worsted stockings in the winter months, and she insisted on buying her black, button-up boots (in a tiny size 2) from Pinet's bootmakers in Mayfair; items left to different friends in her will (such as a 'small three drop diamond pendant' and a 'scarlet Chinese embroidered scarf') also suggest a keen interest in fashion. In later years, she often dressed in masculine attire, adopting the appearance of a dandy.

Writing career

In 1894, Mew succeeded in getting a short story published in ''

The Yellow Book ''The Yellow Book'' was a British quarterly literary periodical that was published in London from 1894 to 1897. It was published at The Bodley Head Publishing House by Elkin Mathews and John Lane, and later by John Lane alone, and edited by th ...

.'' Entitled ''Passed'', it was inspired by Mew's activities as a volunteer social worker and concerns a distressed woman- suggested to be a prostitute- who leads the narrator to a room where her sister lies dead. The narrator is profoundly shocked by the experience, but flees in the end to her comfortable life. She later sees the woman, accompanied by a man, and this causes the narrator to break down, unable to ignore the social ills around her. Five years followed without any publications, but by the beginning of the 20th century she was contributing fiction with some regularity to magazines, including ''Temple Bar.'' She apparently wrote very little poetry until the 1910s. Her first collection, '' The Farmer's Bride'', was published in 1916 in

chapbook A chapbook is a small publication of up to about 40 pages, sometimes bound with a saddle stitch. In early modern Europe a chapbook was a type of printed street literature. Produced cheaply, chapbooks were commonly small, paper-covered bookle ...

format by the

Poetry Bookshop The Poetry Bookshop operated at 35 Devonshire Street (now Boswell Street) in the Bloomsbury district of central London, from 1913 to 1926. It was the brainchild of Harold Monro, and was supported by his moderate income.Joy Grant, ''Harold Monro a ...

; in the United States this collection was entitled ''Saturday Market'' and published in 1921 by

Macmillan MacMillan, Macmillan, McMillen or McMillan may refer to: People * McMillan (surname) * Clan MacMillan, a Highland Scottish clan * Harold Macmillan, British statesman and politician * James MacMillan, Scottish composer * William Duncan MacMillan ...

. It earned her the admiration of

Sydney Cockerell Sydney Carlyle Cockerell (16 July 1867 – 1 May 1962) was an English museum curator and collector. From 1908 to 1937, he was director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England. Biography Sydney Cockerell made his way initially as clerk ...

and drew popular respect for her as a poet. Her poems are varied: some of them (such as "Madeleine in Church") are passionate discussions of faith and the possibility of belief in God; others are proto- modernist in form and atmosphere ("

In Nunhead Cemetery "In Nunhead Cemetery" is a poem by Charlotte Mew. It is set in Nunhead Cemetery in south-east London. Opened in 1840, this is one of London's " Magnificent Seven" cemeteries, built as a response to the city's overflowing church graveyards. It is con ...

"). She made experimental use of long, prose-like lines, and varieties of enjambment and indentation, which has been praised for its originality. Many of her poems are in the form of dramatic monologues, and she often wrote from the point of view of a male persona (" The Farmer's Bride"). Two concern mental illness – "Ken" and "

On the Asylum Road On, on, or ON may refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * On (band) ON was a solo project of Ken Andrews, which he started after the breakup of his previous band, Failure. The music of ON was not unlike that of Failure in terms of songwritin ...

". Many of Mew's poems, including "Ken", "The Farmer's Bride", and "Saturday Market", are about outcast figures, expressing Mew's feelings of alienation from the community in which she lived. Her poem "The Trees Are Down" is a poignant plea for ecological sensitivity and is singled out particularly in the anthology ''The Green Book of Poetry'' by

Ivo Mosley Ivo Adam Rex Mosley (born 1951) is a British writer. His career has encompassed ceramics, poetry, social commentary, opera and musical theatre. His focus of the last few years is on works of non-fiction relating to politics and monetary reform. ...

. Mew gained the patronage of several literary figures, notably

Thomas Hardy Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry of William Word ...

, who called her the best woman poet of her day;

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Woolf was born i ...

, who said she was "very good and interesting and quite unlike anyone else"; and

Siegfried Sassoon Siegfried Loraine Sassoon (8 September 1886 – 1 September 1967) was an English war poet, writer, and soldier. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry both describ ...

. In 1923, she obtained a

Civil List A civil list is a list of individuals to whom money is paid by the government, typically for service to the state or as honorary pensions. It is a term especially associated with the United Kingdom and its former colonies of Canada, India, New Zeal ...

pension of £75 per year with the aid of Cockerell, Hardy,

John Masefield John Edward Masefield (; 1 June 1878 – 12 May 1967) was an English poet and writer, and Poet Laureate from 1930 until 1967. Among his best known works are the children's novels ''The Midnight Folk'' and ''The Box of Delights'', and the poem ...

, and

Walter de la Mare Walter John de la Mare (; 25 April 1873 – 22 June 1956) was an English poet, short story writer, and novelist. He is probably best remembered for his works for children, for his poem "The Listeners", and for a highly acclaimed selection of ...

. This helped ease her financial difficulties.

Decline and death

After the death of her sister from cancer in 1927, Mew continued to live at 64, Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square. She descended into a deep depression and was admitted to the Beaumont Street Nursing Home in

Marylebone Marylebone (usually , also , ) is a district in the West End of London, in the City of Westminster. Oxford Street, Europe's busiest shopping street, forms its southern boundary. An Civil parish#Ancient parishes, ancient parish and latterly a ...

, where she committee suicide by drinking Lysol, a disinfectant. Mew is buried in the northern part of

Hampstead Cemetery Hampstead Cemetery is a historic cemetery in West Hampstead, London, located at the upper extremity of the NW6 district. Despite the name, the cemetery is three-quarters of a mile from Hampstead Village, and bears a different postcode. It is j ...

, London NW6.Wilson, Scott. ''Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons'', 3rd edn: 2 (Kindle Location 32265). McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition

References

External links

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Mew, Charlotte 1869 births 1928 suicides 19th-century English women writers 20th-century English women writers 19th-century English poets 20th-century English poets 19th-century English writers Burials at Hampstead Cemetery English women poets People with mental disorders People from Bloomsbury Suicides by poison Suicides in Westminster Victorian poets Victorian women writers Chapbook writers 1928 deaths

Early life and education

Writing career

Decline and death

References

Further reading

External links