Chains of Love and Beauty: The Diary of Michael Field

280 Pages·2022·8.144 MB·English

by  Carolyn Dever

chains of love and beauty

Chains of Love and Beauty
the diary of michael field
Carolyn Dever
prince ton university press
princet on & oxford
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Dever, Carolyn, author.
Title: Chains of love and beauty : the diary of Michael Field / Carolyn
 Dever, Princeton University Press.
Description: Princeton : Princeton University Press, [2022] | Includes
 bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021033791 (print) | LCCN 2021033792 (ebook) |
 ISBN 9780691203447 (hardback) | ISBN 9780691234977 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Field, Michael Criticism and interpretation. |
 Field, Michael. Works and days. | Bradley, Katharine Harris, 1846 1914. |
 Cooper, Edith Emma, 1862 1913.
Classification: LCC PR4699.F5 Z59 2022 (print) | LCC PR4699.F5 (ebook) |
 DDC 828/.809 dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021033791
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021033792
British Library Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available
Editorial: Anne Savarese and James Collier
Production Editorial: Ellen Foos
Jacket Design: Layla Mac Rory
Production: Erin Suydam
Publicity: Alyssa Sanford and Charlotte Coyne
Copyeditor: Cathryn Slovensky
This book has been composed in Miller
Printed on acid- free paper. ∞
Printed in the United States of Amer ic a
10  9 8   7 6   5  4 3   2  1
. . . The rest
Of our life must be a palimpsest—
The old writing written there the best.
In the parchment hoary
Lies a golden story,
As ’mid secret feather of a dove,
As ’mid moonbeams shifted through a cloud:
Let us write it over,
O my lover,
For the far Time to discover,
As ’mid secret feathers of a dove,
As ’mid moonbeams shifted through a cloud!
— michael field, from wild honey
from vari ous thyme (1908)

contents
List of Illustrations  · i x
Preface and Acknowl edgments  · x i
Editorial Method, Key Figures, and Familiar Names  · x iii
introduction: “Axial in the Spin of Life” 1
chapter 1 “A Rebellious Hand,” 1867–68 and 1888–89 41
chapter 2 “The Hot Hands of the Modern,” 1892–93 71
chapter 3 “The Infamous Cliché,” 1897 105
chapter 4 “Lilies and Light and Liquor,” 1899 133
chapter 5 “Venite Adoremus,” 1906–7 171
chapter 6 The Ends: 1913, 1914, and Beyond 202
Notes  · 2 13
Bibliography  ·  241
Index  · 2 57
[ vii ]

illustrations
Fig. 1. Michael Field, Works and Days, 1888, 1r. 3
Fig. 2. Michael Field (Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper), 1891 5
Fig. 3. Maurice Greiffenhagen, Idyll, 1891 80
Fig. 4. Édouard Manet, Olympia, 1865 87
Fig. 5. Michael Field, Works and Days, 1893, 45v. 93
Fig. 6. Michael Field, Works and Days, 1892, 134r. 98
Fig. 7. Michael Field, Works and Days, 1897, 76r. 107
Fig. 8. Michael Field, Works and Days, 1897, 3v. 116
Fig. 9. Michael Field, Works and Days, 1899, 145v. 170
Fig. 10. Whym Chow, Flame of Love, 1914 186
[ ix ]