ABSTRACT

Many studies of poetic modernism focus on the avatars of High Modernism, Eliot, Pound and Yeats, who created a critical coterie based on culture and class. A New Matrix for Modernism introduces a matrilineage for modernism that traces a distinct women's poetic voice from the Bronte sisters through Alice Meynell to modernists Charlotte Mew and Anna Wickham who combine feminist content with an innovative exploration of formalist prosody. Shifting emphasis from woman to child, mother to daughter, and urbs to suburb, relocating modernism's matrilingua to the boundaries of London society and culture, A NewMatrix for Modernism ranges widely among architecture, mental illness, Fabianism, Positivism, Theosophy, women's suffrage and education to a new house for modernism-a woman's place of secret joys and sorrows. Well researched yet passionate, this book will appeal to both the scholar and the generalist interested in modernism, poetry, feminism, culture and British literary history.

chapter Chapter One|18 pages

The Bohemian and the Dandy

“The permanent child alone can return the fabulous world to us.” 1

chapter Chapter Two|20 pages

Charlotte Mary Mew 1869–1894

“The moon's dropped child” 1

chapter Chapter Three|17 pages

Charlotte Mary Mew 1904–1913

“Yet, to leave Fame, still with such eyes and that bright hair!” 1

chapter Chapter Four|19 pages

Charlotte Mary Mew 1913–1928

“But I mean to go through the door without fear” 1

chapter Chapter Five|11 pages

Anna Wickham 1883–1904

“Where in this wilderness shall I find my path?” 1

chapter Chapter Six|20 pages

Anna Wickham 1904–1947

“I married a man of the Croydon class” 1

chapter Chapter Seven|24 pages

Anna Wickham 1911–1947

“I am a raw uneasy parvenue” 1

chapter Chapter Eight|6 pages

The Angel in the House

“Poetry is a commitment of the soul” 1