This Rare Spirit
Charlotte Mew (1869–1928) was regarded as one of the best poets of her age by her contemporaries. She has since been largely neglected, but her star is beginning to rise again. This is the first comprehensive biography, from cradle to grave. Growing up in Bloomsbury, Mew was an intriguing blend 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 agony of an isolated being forced to keep secret the tragedies of her personal life while simultaneously being propelled by her work into the public arena. Fellow poet Julia Copus sensitively reveals how Mew transfigured that very private suffering into an art of universal resonance.
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