This Rare Spirit

A Life of Charlotte Mew

Julia Copus

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Year: 2021
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9780571313556
• Subtopic: Literary Biographies
• Index: Literature

The first comprehensive biography of this undervalued writer, who was considered 'far and away the best living woman poet' in her day.

'An exquisitely told account of the life of a half-forgotten London poet whose work was admired by Hardy, Sassoon and Virginia Woolf. Julia Copus does her justice at last.' Claire Tomalin

' This Rare Spirit is a classic - the biography of Mew we have all been waiting for.' Fiona Benson

The British poet Charlotte Mew (1869-1928) was regarded as one of the best poets of her age by fellow writers, including Virginia Woolf, Siegfried Sasson, Walter de la Mare and Marianne Moore. She has since been neglected, but her star is beginning to rise again, all the more since her 150th anniversary in 2019. This is the first comprehensive biography, from cradle to grave, and is written by fellow poet Julia Copus, who recently unveiled a blue plaque on Mew's childhood house in Doughty Street and was the editor of the Selected Poetry and Prose (2019).

Mew was a curious mix of New Woman and stalwart Victorian. Her poems speak to us strongly today, in these strangely mixed times of exposure and seclusion: they reveal the private agony of an isolated being who was forced to keep secret the tragedies of her personal life while being at the same time propelled by her work into the public arena. Her poetry transfigures that very private suffering into art that has a universal resonance.

Table of contents

• Landing Page
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Family Trees
• Map of Bloomsbury in 1897
• Introduction
• Prologue
• 1: Good Five-O’Clock People
• 2: Bad Milk
• 3: A Rosebud Set with Little Wilful Thorns
• 4: What You’re Made, That You’ll Be
• 5: Marks Upon the Snow
• 6: A Yellow Book Discovery
• 7: Some Glimpses of the New Woman
• 8: The World Goes on the Same Outside
• 9: City of White Days
• 10: The Whole Gay, Unbearable, Amazing Show
• 11: Waking and Worried Days
• 12: A Voice on the Sharp Air
• 13: The Din, the Scuffle, the Long Stare
• 14: Our Little Wind-blown Hearts
• 15: This Dark Ditch, the Soul of Me!
• 16: The New and True Note of Genius
• 17: Witnesses to the ‘Real Thing’
• 18: I Have Been Through the Gates
• 19: Minuit Sonné and Not Half the Day’s Work Done!
• 20: This Rare Spirit
• 21: The Thing Is Found
• Postscript
• Acknowledgements
• Select Bibliography
• Appendix
• Notes and References
• Text Permissions
• Index
• Plates
• About the Author
• By the Same Author
• Copyright