Libidinous laureates and lyrical maenads : Michael Field, Swinburne and erotic Hellenism

In 1889 “Michael Field”—the pseudonymous identity of Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper—published Long Ago, a volume of lyric poetry based on the extant Sapphic fragments. In deference to the poet whom they called the “guardian” of the “Lesbian lyrics,” Bradley and Cooper sent a copy of Long Ago to Algernon Swinburne, together with a short letter: With flaming sword you have kept guard over the Lesbian lyrics; I have passed by you & touched the sacred things, & though I know my rifling to have been “sad & mad & bad,” it has been to me “so sweet” that, unrepentant as I recross the barrier, I lay my spoil in your hands. Fiery vengeance take if you will, Poet of Anactoria. I shall not strive but remain as before Yours in sincere admiration, Michael Field This brief note is illuminating in a number of respects, not least because Michael Field reveal that they were devotees of the work of Swinburne. In fact Bradley and Cooper considered Swinburne to be the best poet in England and a worthy successor to the Poet Laureate. Sharing Swinburne’s love of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, the women were avid readers of Swinburne’s critical writing and they were interested in the same kind of dramatic models. In a number of cases, Michael Field treated the same dramatic subjects as Swinburne, including Mary Stuart, Sappho, and Tristan de Leonois.