Legends & Lyrics & Other Poems - Softcover

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original artwork and text.

ADELAIDE ANNE PROCTER w as born October 3oth, 1825, at 25 Bedford Square, London. She was the first child and eldest daughter of Bryan Waller Procter, Barrr Cornwall, and was well fitted by her intellectual temper to profit by the surroundings among which she grew up. Her early taste for poetry is shown by a little album made of note-paper, in which her mother, she still being unable to write, copied out her favourite poems for her according to Charles Dickens, who had seen the tiny volume, it looked as if she had carried it about, very much as another little girl might have carried her doll. Besides having an educated taste for poetry, she was a good musician, had some slight faculty for drawing, was fond of languages, and at all times an omnivorous reader. Her first published poems had been accepted by the Book of Beauty in 1843, when she was eighteen years of age. And later, writing under the pseudonym of Mary Berwick, being unwilling that anything of hers should be accepted out of mere personal kindness-its editor Charles Dickens being a friend of her father-she sent poems to Household Words, during 1853 and 1854. It was not until Dickens called her fathers attention, to a poem in the Christmas Number of this latter year, as worthy of his perusal, that the secret came out. Miss Procter was an active worker for her fellowwomen and their cause, their social status, their need of fuller education, occupied her continually. She was elected on a Committee for the consideration of further en ploymentf or women by the Council of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science. The volume of miscellaneous prose and verse, which she vii ... Vlll Editors . Note edited under the title of Victoria Regia, was set up by women compositors. Her Chaplet of Verses was published in aid of a Night Refuge, and she spent some of her evenings in teaching a class of poor children. Miss Procter entered the Church of Rome in 1851. In 1853 she visited a Roman Catholic Church in Turin, and whilst there made a study of the Piedmontese dialect. Letters of hers, written during her stay, give a lively picture of some of her experiences among the peasants. Notwithstanding the activity of her mind, and the tireless duties she imposed upon herself, Miss Procter was at no age of robust health. She was an invalid for fifteen months before her death from consumption, which took place February 2nd, 1864. Her good spirits and her humour did not fail her even in her long sickness. As we have already told, Miss Procter began her literary career in 1843. The first collected edition of her poems from Noz sehold Words, AN the Year Rozmd, CornhilZ, and Good Words was published under the title of Legends and Lyrics . in 1858. The same year saw a second edition, to be followed by others in 1859 and since then these volumes have not ceased to be re-issued. A poem Links with Heaven, contributed to Victoria Regia a volume of prose and verse by various authors, edited by Miss Procter and published in 1861, and a small volume entitled A Chaplet of Verses, published on behalf of a Charity in 1862, complete the list of Miss Procters works. A brief memoir was written by Charles Dickens, for the 1866 edition of her poems. M. E. DEDICATED MATILDA M. HAYS Our tokens of love are for the most part badat-nus. Cold altd Zz eless, because they do not represent our life. The on gzyt is n portion of thysedf Therefore let the farmer give his corn the miner, a gem the sailor, coral and shells the painter, his picture and the poet, his poem.-Emersons Essays. A. A. P. May 1858. CONTENTS PAGE The Angels Story . . I Echoes . 7 A False Genius . . 7 My Picture . . . . . 8 Judge Not . . 10 Friend Sorrow . . . . X I One by One . 11 True Honours ...