Adelaide Anne Procter facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Adelaide Anne Procter
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Undated portrait by Emma Gaggiotti Richards
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| Born | 30 October 1825 London, England, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
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| Died | 2 February 1864 (aged 38) London, England, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
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| Resting place | Kensal Green Cemetery |
| Occupation | Poet, philanthropist |
Adelaide Anne Procter (born October 30, 1825 – died February 2, 1864) was an English poet and a kind person who helped others (a philanthropist). She was very popular during her time.
Adelaide started writing poems when she was a teenager. Her poems appeared in famous magazines like Household Words and All the Year Round, which were run by Charles Dickens. She also wrote for magazines that supported women's rights. Her poems often talked about important issues like homelessness and poverty. Queen Victoria, who was the Queen of England, loved Procter's poems. Some people even said she was the most popular poet after Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
Adelaide Anne Procter never married. She became ill, possibly because she worked too hard helping others. She passed away from tuberculosis when she was 38 years old.
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Life of Adelaide Anne Procter
Adelaide Anne Procter was born in London, England, on October 30, 1825. Her father, Bryan Procter, was also a poet. Their home was a lively place where many famous writers and artists visited. These visitors included Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Lamb, and Charles Dickens. A family friend, Bessie Rayner Parkes, said that many important literary people seemed to always be at their house.
Adelaide was a very smart child. She loved to read and mostly taught herself. She also studied for a short time at Queen's College, London in 1850. This college was started to help educate women.
Adelaide loved poetry from a young age. She carried a small book where her mother copied her favorite poems. She published her first poem, "Ministering Angels," when she was still a teenager in 1843. Later, in 1853, she sent poems to Charles Dickens's magazine, Household Words. She used the name "Mary Berwick" so her work would be judged fairly, not because of her father's friendship with Dickens. Dickens found out her real identity the next year. She published many poems in Dickens's magazines. Most of these poems were later put into her books, Legends and Lyrics. She also edited a magazine called Victoria Regia, which was part of a publishing company that supported women writers.
In 1851, Procter became a Roman Catholic. After this, she became very active in helping people and supporting women's rights. She joined a group called the Langham Place Group. This group worked to make life better for women. She also helped start the English Woman's Journal in 1858. In 1859, she helped create the Society for the Promotion of the Employment of Women. Both of these groups aimed to create more job opportunities for women. Her third book of poems, A Chaplet of Verses (1861), was published to raise money for a Catholic shelter for women and children in East London.
Adelaide Anne Procter became ill in 1862. Many people, including Charles Dickens, believed her illness was caused by her hard work in charity. She tried to get better, but her health did not improve. On February 3, 1864, she died from tuberculosis. She had been sick for almost a year. Her death was seen as a great loss by many. She was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery.
Adelaide Anne Procter's Writings
Procter's poems were greatly influenced by her religious beliefs and her charity work. She often wrote about important topics like homelessness, poverty, and women who faced difficult lives. In her poems, she showed how hard life was for poor people.
Her Catholic faith also influenced her writing. For example, she often mentioned the Virgin Mary in her poems. This helped her share her ideas about how a heavenly order could challenge the way society treated women in Victorian times.
Procter also wrote several poems about war. She usually kept war in the background of her poems, suggesting it rather than describing it directly. These poems often showed how conflict could bring a nation together, even if it had been divided by social classes.
Unlike many other women poets of her time, Procter did not focus on her own fame. Instead, she cared deeply about working-class people, especially women. Her poems often showed the strong feelings of women who could not fully express themselves in society. Her writing style was simple and clear. She wanted to make sure her poems were easy to understand.
How People Saw Her Work
Adelaide Anne Procter was incredibly popular in the mid-1800s. She was Queen Victoria's favorite poet. People loved her poems because they were clear and expressed honest feelings. Procter herself was humble about her work. Her friend Bessie Raynor Belloc said that Procter felt a bit sad that her own fame as a poet was greater than her father's. Procter once said, "Papa is a poet. I only write verses."
Procter's popularity continued even after she died. Her first book, Legends and Lyrics, was reprinted 19 times by 1881. Many of her poems were turned into hymns or songs. One famous example is "The Lost Chord", which was set to music by Arthur Sullivan in 1877. This song became very popular in Britain and the United States. Her work was also published in America and translated into German.
However, by the 1900s, Procter's reputation had declined. Some critics thought her poems were not very deep. Some experts believe that Charles Dickens's description of her as a "model middle-class domestic angel" made people forget that she was also an active supporter of women's rights and a strong poet.
Today, not many critics study Procter's work. However, those who do often find her poems important. They show how Victorian women expressed their feelings, even when society expected them to keep them hidden. Her poetry helps us understand the lives and emotions of women during that time.
List of works
- "Three Evenings in the House", a short story written for A House to Let (1858), a special Christmas story collection by Charles Dickens.
- Legends and Lyrics, first series, 1858
- Legends and Lyrics, second series, 1861
- A Chaplet of Verses, 1862
Images for kids
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Adelaide Anne Procter
See also
In Spanish: Adelaide Anne Procter para niños
