Description:
A scholarly edition of the prose work of Michael Field - the penname of Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper - one of the most important, and unique, literary voices of the fin de siècle.
Brief description: Alex Murray is Senior Lecturer in Modern Literature at Queen's University Belfast.
Review Quotes:
'Alex Murray's and Sarah Parker's edition of Michael Field's short prose, For That Moment Only, considers the small-scale, gem-like pieces that were either lifted from the diary or specifically composed for publication. These range from essays or even sermons to sketches, impressions, vignettes, croquis, short stories and pieces of memorably poetic prose. In their excellent and detailed introduction, the editors describe croquis or prose poems as 'the fragmented and fleeting poetic forms we associate with modernism', though this notional "modernity of form" goes back not only to the 1860s, with Baudelaire's Petits Poèmes en prose and Pater's early essays, but also to Novalis and Schlegel as well as Coleridge.'
Angela Leighton, Times Literary Supplement, 17 Feb. 2023.