Katherine Harris Bradley & Edith Emma Cooper Edith later led the way in establishing the couple as active Catholics. In 1899 the death of Edith's father enabled them to buy their own house as evidence of their 'close marriage', although Edith saw her father's death as retribution for their lifestyle. They knew many of the aesthetic movement of the 1890s, including Walter Pater, Vernon Lee, J. While they were always well connected, the early critical success was not sustained (this is often attributed to the joint identity of Field becoming known). Robert Browning was also a close friend of theirs, and they knew and admired Oscar Wilde, whose death they bitterly mourned.

They developed a large circle of literary friends and contacts in particular painters and life partners Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon, near whom they settled in Richmond, London. They were Aestheticists, strongly influenced by the thoughts of Walter Pater. They had financial independence: Bradley's father Charles Bradley had been in the tobacco industry in Birmingham. Their first joint publication as Michael Field was 'Callirhöe and Fair Rosamund' in 1884. Edith adopted the name Isla Leigh for their first joint publication, Bellerophôn.įrom the late 1870s, when Edith was at University College, Bristol, they agreed to live together and were, over the next 40 years, lesbian lovers, and co-authors. She published first under the pseudonym Arran Leigh, a nod to Elizabeth Barrett. Emma Cooper became an invalid for life after the birth of her second daughter, Amy, and Katharine Bradley, being her sister, stepped in to become the legal guardian of her niece Edith Cooper.īradley was for a time involved with Ruskin's utopian project. She was educated at the Collège de France and Newnham College, Cambridge.īradley's elder sister, Emma, married James Robert Cooper in 1860, and went to live in Kenilworth, where their daughter, Edith Emma Cooper was born on 12 January 1862. Her grandfather, also Charles Bradley (1785–1845), was a prominent follower and financial backer of prophetess Joanna Southcott and her self-styled successor John 'Zion' Ward.

Katherine Bradley was born on 27 October 1846 in Birmingham, England, the daughter of Charles Bradley, a tobacco manufacturer, and of Emma (née Harris).

Attila, My Attila! by Edith Cooper