‘Michael Field' [Katharine Harris Bradley (1846 –1914) and Edith Emma Cooper (1862–1913)]

‘Michael Field’ was the pseudonym used by two women poets, Katharine Harris Bradley and Edith Emma Cooper, who wrote and published together, as one person, throughout most of their lives. Katharine’s elder sister was Emma’s mother, making them aunt and niece. Katharine did publish a first volume of poems (The New Minnesinger) on her own in 1875, under the pseudonym ‘Arran Leigh’ (no doubt partly inspired by Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh , still renowned after 20 years). In 1881 she published a second volume, Bellerophon, this time with her niece, as ‘by Arran and Isla Leigh’. The collaboration had begun.