ABSTRACT
Constance Naden, poet, essayist and philosopher, was born in Edgbaston, a suburb of Birmingham, to Thomas Naden, later President of the Birmingham Architectural Association, and his wife Caroline, who died within two weeks of her daughter’s birth. As a result of the loss of her mother, the baby Constance was handed over by her father to be raised by her mother’s parents, who were very comfortably off. In fact, her father also lived with his parents-in-law at that time. She appears to have led a sheltered if rather solemn childhood, attending a private day school run by the Unitarian Misses Martin, between the ages of eight and sixteen, and mentally digesting the contents of her grandfather’s extensive library. The young Naden showed a remarkable intellectual precocity, which she nevertheless kept hidden from her schoolfellows. She is said, however, to have entertained the younger girls with a succession of marvellous stories. Her talents were unusual in that they ranged across both the sciences and the arts, with an acute power of deductive reasoning complemented by a strong sense of aesthetic design. She was sometimes held in awe by her contemporaries for her unswerving adherence to the pursuit of truth as well as for her quiet but mischievous sense of fun.
