Michael Field

Michael Field was the pen name used for poetry and poetic drama by Katherine Harris Bradley (October 27, 1846 - September 26, 1914) and her niece and ward Edith Emma Cooper (January 12, 1862 - December 13, 1913). As Field, they wrote about 40 works together and the long journal Works and Days. Their intention was to keep the pseudonym secret, but it became publicly available shortly after they confided in their friend Robert Browning. Katherine Bradley was born on October 27, 1846 in Birmingham, England, the daughter of Charles Bradley, a tobacco producer, and Emma (née Harris). Her grandfather, also Charles Bradley (1785–1845), was a prominent follower and financial patron of the prophetess Joanna Southcott and her successor John “Zion”. She was educated at the College de France and Newnham College, Cambridge. Bradley's older sister, Emma, ​​married James Robert Cooper in 1860 and moved to Kenilworth, where their daughter Edith Emma Cooper was born on January 12, 1862. Emma Cooper became disabled for life after the birth of her second daughter Amy and Katherine Bradley, being her sister, she became the legal guardian of her niece Edith Cooper. For some time, Bradley participated in the utopian project of Ruskin. She first published under the pseudonym Arran Lee, nodding to Elizabeth Barrett. Edith took the name Isla Lee for her first joint publication, Bellerophôn. Since the late 1870s, when Edith studied at University College in Bristol, they agreed to live together and for the next 40 years were lesbian lovers and co-authors. Their first co-publication as Michael Field was Callirhöe and Fair Rosamund in 1884. They had financial independence: Bradley's father Charles Bradley worked in the tobacco industry in Birmingham.