(Helen) Hope Mirrlees (8 April 1887 – 1 August 1978)
/ref> was a British poet, novelist, and translator. She is best known for the 1926 ''

Lud-in-the-Mist ''Lud-in-the-Mist'' (1926) is the third and final novel by British writer Hope Mirrlees. It continues the author's exploration of the themes of Life and Art, by a method already described in the preface of her first novel, ''Madeleine: One of Lo ...

'', a fantasy novel and influential classic,

David Langford David Rowland Langford (born 10 April 1953) is a British author, editor, and critic, largely active within the science fiction field. He publishes the science fiction fanzine and newsletter ''Ansible'', and holds the all-time record for most ...

and Mike Ashley, "Mirrlees, Hope", in

David Pringle David Pringle (born 1 March 1950) is a Scottish science fiction editor and critic. Pringle served as the editor of ''Foundation'', an academic journal, from 1980 to 1986, during which time he became one of the prime movers of the collective whic ...

(ed.), ''St. James Guide To Fantasy Writers'', St. James Press, 1996, pp. 407–8. . and for '' Paris: A Poem'' (1920)'','' an experimental poem published by Virginia and Leonard Woolf's Hogarth Press, which critic Julia Briggs deemed "modernism's lost masterpiece, a work of extraordinary energy and intensity, scope and ambition."

Biography

Born in Chislehurst, Kent, and raised in Scotland and South Africa, Mirrlees attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art before going up to Newnham College, Cambridge to study Greek. While at Cambridge, Mirrlees developed a close relationship with famous classicist

Jane Ellen Harrison Jane Ellen Harrison (9 September 1850 – 15 April 1928) was a British classics, classical scholar and linguistics, linguist. Harrison is one of the founders, with Karl Kerenyi and Walter Burkert, of modern studies in Ancient Greek religio ...

, Mirrlees' tutor and later her friend and collaborator. Mirrlees and Harrison lived together from 1913 until the latter's death in 1928. Although they divided their time mainly between the United Kingdom and France, often returning to Paris to continue Harrison's medical treatments, their travels also took them to other European countries. Both of them studied Russian, Mirrlees earning a Diploma in Russian from the

École des Langues Orientales Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales ( en, National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations), abbreviated as INALCO, is a French university specializing in the teaching of languages and cultures from the world. ...

of Paris, and went on to collaborate on translations from the Russian. Mirrlees and Harrison visited Spain in 1920, and there took Spanish lessons. After Harrison's death, Mirrlees converted to Catholicism. In 1948, Mirrlees moved to South Africa and remained there until 1963, when the first volume of her "extravagant biography" of Sir

Robert Bruce Cotton Sir Robert Bruce Cotton, 1st Baronet (22 January 1570/71 – 6 May 1631) of Conington Hall in the parish of Conington in Huntingdonshire, England,Kyle, Chris & Sgroi was a Member of Parliament and an antiquarian who founded the Cotton library. ...

was published (the second volume is unpublished). Two volumes of poetry, ''Poems'' and ''Moods and Tensions'', were also privately published. Mirrlees was a friend of

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 described her in a letter as "her own heroine – capricious, exacting, exquisite, very learned, and beautifully dressed." Her circle of celebrity friends also included T. S. Eliot;

Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny West neighborhood and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris ...

, who mentions Mirrlees in ''Everybody's Autobiography'';

Bertrand Russell Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ...

; and

Ottoline Morrell Lady Ottoline Violet Anne Morrell (16 June 1873 – 21 April 1938) was an English aristocrat and society hostess. Her patronage was influential in artistic and intellectual circles, where she befriended writers including Aldous Huxley, Siegfr ...

. Mirrlees died in Thames Bank, Goring, England, in 1978, aged 91.

Writing

Mirrlees' 600-line modernist poem, ''Paris: A Poem'', published in 1920 by

Leonard Leonard or ''Leo'' is a common English masculine given name and a surname. The given name and surname originate from the Old High German ''Leonhard'' containing the prefix ''levon'' ("lion") from the Greek Λέων ("lion") through the Latin '' L ...

and Virginia Woolf's

Hogarth Press The Hogarth Press is a book publishing imprint of Penguin Random House that was founded as an independent company in 1917 by British authors Leonard Woolf and Virginia Woolf. It was named after their house in Richmond (then in Surrey and now ...

, is the subject of increasing attention by scholars of modernism, inspired by Julia Briggs's considerable study, and is considered by some to have had an influence on the work of her friend, T. S. Eliot, and on that of

. Mirrlees set her first novel, ''Madeleine: One of Love's Jansenists'' (1919), in and around the literary circles of the 17th Century

Précieuses The French literary style called ''préciosité'' (, ''preciousness'') arose in the 17th century from the lively conversations and playful word games of ''les précieuses'' (), the intellectual, witty and educated women who frequented the salo ...

, and particularly those salons frequented by

Mlle de Scudéry Mademoiselle () is a French courtesy title, abbreviated Mlle, traditionally given to an unmarried woman. The equivalent in English is " Miss". The courtesy title "Madame" is accorded women where their marital status is unknown. From around 1970 ...

. Mirrlees later used medieval

Spanish culture The culture of ''Spain'' is based on a variety of historical influences, primarily based on the culture of ancient Rome, Spain being a prominent part of the Greco-Roman world for centuries, the very name of Spain comes from the name that the Rom ...

as part of the background of her second novel, ''

The Counterplot ''The Counterplot'' is the second novel by Hope Mirrlees. Written in 1923, it was originally published in 1924, and is the only one of Mirrlees's three novels to take place in then-contemporary settings, ''Madeleine: One of Love's Jansenists' ...

'' (1924). ''Lud-in-the-Mist'' was reprinted in 1970 in mass-market paperback format by

Lin Carter Linwood Vrooman Carter (June 9, 1930 – February 7, 1988) was an American author of science fiction and fantasy, as well as an editor, poet and critic. He usually wrote as Lin Carter; known pseudonyms include H. P. Lowcraft (for an H. P. L ...

, without the author's permission, for the

Ballantine Adult Fantasy series The Ballantine Adult Fantasy series was an imprint of American publisher Ballantine Books. Launched in 1969 (presumably in response to the growing popularity of Tolkien's works), the series reissued a number of works of fantasy literature which ...

, and then again by Del Rey in 1977. The "unauthorised" nature of the 1970 reprint is explained by the fact that, as Carter indicated in his introduction, he and the publishing company could not even ascertain whether the author was alive or dead, "since our efforts to trace this lady irrleeshave so far been unsuccessful." Since 2000, Mirrlees' work has undergone another resurgence in popularity, marked by new editions of her poetry, an entry in the ''

Dictionary of National Biography The ''Dictionary of National Biography'' (''DNB'') is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published since 1885. The updated ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (''ODNB'') was published on 23 September ...

'' and several scholarly essays by critic Julia Briggs, new introductions to ''Lud-in-the-Mist'' by writer

Neil Gaiman Neil Richard MacKinnon GaimanBorn as Neil Richard Gaiman, with "MacKinnon" added on the occasion of his marriage to Amanda Palmer. ; ( Neil Richard Gaiman; born 10 November 1960) is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, gr ...

and scholar Douglas A. Anderson, essays and a brief biography by writer

Michael Swanwick Michael Swanwick (born 18 November 1950) is an American fantasy and science fiction author who began publishing in the early 1980s. Writing career Swanwick's fiction writing began with short stories, starting in 1980 when he published "Ginungagap ...

, an artist-book facsimile reprint of ''Paris, a poem'' by printer and publisher Hurst Street Press, and translations of ''Lud-in-the-Mist'' into German and Spanish.

Joanna Russ Joanna Russ (February 22, 1937 – April 29, 2011) was an American writer, academic and feminist. She is the author of a number of works of science fiction, fantasy and feminist literary criticism such as ''How to Suppress Women's Writing'', as w ...

wrote a short story, ''The Zanzibar Cat'' (1971), in homage to Hope Mirrlees and as a critique of ''Lud-in-the-Mist'' – and indeed the entire genre of fantasy, describing Fairyland "half in affectionate parody, but the other half very seriously indeed". ''Hope-in-the-Mist'', a book-length study of Mirrlees and her work by Michael Swanwick, was published by Temporary Culture in 2009. ''The Collected Poems of Hope Mirrlees'' was published by Fyfield Books (

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 ...

) in 2011 (edited by Sandeep Parmar). It includes previously unpublished poems, the full text of ''Paris'', her later poems and prose essays from the 1920s.

Sandeep Parmar Sandeep Parmar is a contemporary poet, who was born in Nottingham, England, and raised in Southern California. She currently lives in the UK. Parmar is a Professor of English Literature at the University of Liverpool. Her poetry collections incl ...

is currently writing a biography of Mirrlees as well. She also features in the group biography ''Square Haunting'' by Francesca Wade (2020).Wade, Francesca. ''Square Haunting'' (2020), Faber
/ref>

Bibliography

Fiction

*''Madeleine: One of Love's Jansenists'', W. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd (1919) *''

'', W. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd (1924) *''

'' (1926)

Poetry

*''Paris: A Poem'',

(1919) *''Poems'', Cape Town, Gothic (1963) *''Moods and Tensions: Poems'' (1976)
Collected Poems of Hope Mirrlees
(2011), edited by Sandeep Parmar *''Paris: A Poem'', Hurst Street Press (2017)

Non-fiction

*"Quelques aspects de l’art d' Alexis Mikhailovich Remizov", in ''Le Journal de Psychologie Normale et Pathologique'', 15 January – 15 March (1926) *"Listening in to the Past", in ''The Nation & Athenaeum'', 11 September (1926) *"The Religion of Women", in ''The Nation & Athenaeum'', 28 May (1927) *"Gothic Dreams", in ''The Nation & Athenaeum'', 3 March (1928) *"Bedside Books", in ''Life and Letters'', December (1928) *''A Fly in Amber: Being an Extravagant Biography of the Romantic Antiquary Sir

'' (1962)

Translations by Hope Mirrlees

*''The life of the Archpriest

Avvakum Avvakum Petrov (russian: link=no, Аввакум Петров; 20 November 1620/21 – 14 April 1682) (also spelled Awakum) was an Old Believer and Russian protopope of the Kazan Cathedral on Red Square who led the opposition to Patriarch N ...

by Himself'' (1924) with

*''The Book of the Bear: Being Twenty-one Tales newly translated from the Russian '' (1926) with Jane Harrison, the pictures by Ray Garnett

Translations

*''Le choc en retour'' (1929), translation by Simone Martin-Chauffier ("The Counterplot") *''Flucht ins Feenland'' (2003), transl. by Hannes Riffel ("Lud-in-the-Mist") *''Entrebrumas'' (2005) ("Lud-in-the-Mist")
פריז
- ''Paris: A Poem'' (2016) Hebrew transl. by Yehuda Vizan

References

*''The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', entry by Julia Briggs *Holbrook Jackson, ''The Anatomy of Bibliomania'', 2001 *Annabel Robinson, ''The Life and Work of

'', Oxford University Press, 2002

External links

* * *
Hope Mirrlees papers
at the

University of Maryland libraries The University of Maryland Libraries is the largest university library in the Washington, D.C. - Baltimore area. The university's library system includes eight libraries: six are located on the College Park campus, while the Severn Library, an of ...

Hope Mirrlees on the Web
(hopemirrlees.com)

– contains a photo of Mirrlees with

The Lady Who Wrote ''Lud-in-the-Mist''
by

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mirrlees, Hope 1887 births 1978 deaths English fantasy writers British women novelists British women poets People from Chislehurst 20th-century British novelists 20th-century British women writers British women short story writers Women science fiction and fantasy writers 20th-century British poets 20th-century British short story writers