Category: Biography

A London phantom, by R. Thurston Hopkins

London fog
London fog

As it describes Ernest Dowson’s look and behaviour, this strange text has been included in the edition by Flower & Maas of Dowson’s letters. The ghost-like appearance of a repulsive man who seems a living dead carrying mould from his own grave, but who also notices every movement of Dowson and Thurston, seems quite surrealistic. But it is also a dire testimony to the poverty and misery that existed in London at the end of the 19th century.

This text relating events at the end of the 1890’s is undated, but it mentions the 1932 film Cynara directed by King Vidor, it was thus written more than 30 years after the incident. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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Katharine Bradley’s first love poems for Edith Cooper

Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper
Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper

The English poet and playwright Katharine Harris Bradley was born on October 26 or 27, 1846, the second daughter of Charles Bradley, a tobacco merchant, and Emma Harris. Her father died in 1848. Her elder sister Emma, born in 1835, married John Robert Cooper in 1860. Their first daughter Edith Emma Cooper was born on January 12, 1862. After the birth of her second daughter Amy Katharine in 1865, Emma Cooper became invalid for life. In July 1867, Katharine Bradley and her widowed mother joined the Cooper family, and Katharine took care of the household and her two nieces. Her mother Emma Harris died in 1868, leaving Katharine as legal guardian of Edith and Amy. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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Agitations paranormales autour de Minou Drouet

Minou Drouet
Minou Drouet – dans Minou Drouet : ses messages de lumière, de Georgette Corot-Gélas

La publication des poèmes de Minou Drouet et ensuite l’histoire de son enfance ont toujours donné lieu à des allégations fantastiques, soit sur les supposés pouvoirs paranormaux de la fillette, soit sur l’influence télépathique ou l’emprise hypnotique de sa mère adoptive. Celle-ci d’ailleurs contribua pour une large part à ces spéculations. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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To Ianthe, by George Gordon Byron

Lady Charlotte Harley as Ianthe
Drawn by R. Westall and engraved by W. Finden – Lady Charlotte Harley as Ianthe (1833) – from Wikimedia Commons

Lord Byron’s long poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage was published between 1812 and 1818, the first two Cantos in 1812, the third in 1816 and the fourth in 1818, and each edition added some new material. The seventh edition appeared on February 1, 1814, with nine poems added to the twenty already published, and a poem titled “To Ianthe” was prefixed to the First Canto. Written in the autumn of 1812, it was dedicated to Lady Charlotte Harley. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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Mme Claude Drouet n’aurait jamais pu écrire les poèmes de Minou

Claude et Minou Drouet
IMS Vintage Photos – Claude et Minou Drouet (c.1962)

Quand René Julliard publia les premiers poèmes de Minou Drouet en 1955, de nombreux critiques crièrent à la supercherie, affirmant que sa mère adoptive, Claude Drouet, en était le véritable auteur. Ainsi André Breton affirma, invoquant les travaux du psychologue Jean Piaget : « il n’est pas une enfant de cet âge et bien au-delà, qui puisse, par elle-même et à elle seule, écrire ce qu’on prête à Minou Drouet. » Dans un entretien avec André Parinaud, Michèle Perrein, reporter du journal Elle et principale propagandiste de la thèse de l’imposture, usa également d’un pareil argument : CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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Sorrows, by Brooke Boothby

Thomas Banks – monument to Penelope Boothby
Thomas Banks – monument to Penelope Boothby (1793) – from Wikimedia Commons

Sir Brooke Boothby (1743–1824), seventh Baronet, and his wife Susanna (1755–1822) had a daughter, Penelope, born on April 11, 1785, their only child. The little girl is renowned for her portrait made by Sir Joshua Reynolds in July 1788. As writes Estelle Hurll in her booklet about Sir Joshua Reynolds: CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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Requiescat, Oscar Wilde’s tribute to his sister Isola

An envelope containing strands of Isola Wilde's hair, found among Oscar Wilde's possessions when he died
An envelope containing strands of Isola Wilde’s hair, found among Oscar Wilde’s possessions when he died – Photograph: Merlin Holland Picture Archive

Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde was born on October 16, 1854 in Dublin, the second son of William Robert Wills Wilde, a famous otolaryngologist and ophthalmologist, and Jane Francesca Agnes Elgee, a poet and supporter of the Irish nationalist movement. His mother wanted a daughter, and as a toddler, Oscar was raised and clothed as a little girl. The feminine and intellectual way in which she educated him must have contributed to his sensitive and aesthetic temperament, quite opposed to that of his father. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

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