One Soul We Divided: A Critical Edition of the Diary of Michael Field

Dartmouth College English professor Dever (Chains of Love and Beauty) compiles selections from the 30-volume joint diary of Victorian-era British writers and lovers Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper, the daughter of Bradley’s sister, who together published plays and poems under the pseudonym Michael Field. Aside from one diary solely written by Bradley from 1867 to 1868, the entries detail the lovers’ exploits from 1888—four years after the publication of their first plays and around the zenith of their modest literary popularity—until Cooper and Bradley’s deaths in 1913 and 1914. The jumbled selections consist of ruminations on poetry and depictions of Britain’s literary elite (they write of Oscar Wilde, “There is no charm in his elephantine body tightly stuffed into his clothes”). Some narrative momentum develops in later sections detailing Bradley and Cooper’s efforts to build a life together after the death of Cooper’s father allows them to move in together, but readers’ investment will depend on their ability to stomach an incestuous central couple who, as their diaries show, were often dismissive of other women writers and the suffragist movement. This curious if unruly literary experiment will chiefly be of interest to scholars. (Jan.)