"Frances Cornford, Poet"
Maber, Peter (2026) "Frances Cornford, Poet". In: *From Darwin to Cornford: The Evolution of the Poet Frances Cornford*. De Gruyter Brill, pp. 192-220. ISBN 978-90-04-75468-3
Abstract
This chapter from the book *From Darwin to Cornford: The Evolution of the Poet Frances Cornford* provides a sustained reassessment of Frances Cornford’s poetry from across her whole career. It organises itself around the poet's claim that ‘poetry must be personal, because it springs from a first hand experience […] and impersonal, because it must reach something in us which is universal’, arguing that Cornford’s poems are at once familiar and strange; that they are written from experience and yet are content to leave much unspoken; and that they employ distancing techniques that complicate the seemingly straightforward presentation of emotions. The chapter draws on a previously unseen archive to give new illuminations of Cornford's work. It traces through her poetry continuities and ruptures with dominant modes and considers the critical response to her work in her times. Attention is given to her light verse and its serious intentions; her distinctive ways of viewing the world, including connections with her cousin, the artist Gwen Raverat; the connections between her nature verse and evolutionary theory; her war poetry; and her writing of the self, including in relation to ideas about gender.
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