On August 30, 1890, the Bristol Mercury hailed the splendid dramatic powers of publicity-shy poet Michael Field, recommending some theatrical impresario quickly secure the rights to one of his plays. But within two years, the literary sensation was effectively cancelled. Undeterred, Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper continued to publish as Michael Field until their deaths.

Word had spread that the author was hiding behind a nom-de-plume. Papers whacked inverted commas around his previously unadorned name. Then, critics repeated rumours that the gentleman author was a lady. Next, even worse, two ladies. Victorian readers preferred male authors. But if there was anything worse than women writers, it was co-authors. Surely scribblers only collaborated on work because of a lack of individual ability.

The first published works of Michael Field attracted high praise.

“We know nothing of the author,” said the Spectator, “but we detect in his poetry the ring of a new voice which is likely to be heard far and wide among the English-speaking peoples.”

Authors were great celebrities in the late Victorian era. People wanted to know them. But all anyone knew of Michael Field was his name.

Field published seven books of verse drama in the four years from 1884. Then in 1889, a book of poetry. Not just any old poetry but a book of poems inspired by the archaic lyric poet Sappho.

Sappho is the most famous lesbian of all time. History knew the Greek poet as an inhabitant of the island of Lesbos. And from 1885, as a lover of other women. A lesbian Lesbian. Only fragments of her verse survived the ages. Before 1885, readers believed those lines spoke of love between men and women. Because censorious translators swapped out pronouns and otherwise heterosexualised her lines.

But in 1895, a new edition of her poetry revealed the objects of Sappho’s desire as female. Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper read the new book with ‘passionate pleasure’. They conceived the idea of building poems from extant snippets of Sappho’s lost works.

By then, Michael Field had divulged their identity to Robert Browning, the doyen of Victorian poets.

Browning understood that Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper did not choose to attribute their work to a single person — a single male person — on a whim.

In 1881, they’d published Bellerophôn under the names Arran and Isla Leigh. They attributed that poetry collection’s lack of success to the joint female authorship. And so was born Michael Field.

Katherine Bradley wrote in their diary that their literary output would never otherwise receive serious consideration.

“The report of lady authorship will dwarf and enfeeble our work at every turn.”

Robert Browning was one of their literary heroes. He became a friend and confidante. Before publication, they asked for his critique of their collection of Sapphic poems. He recommended they remove some of the more explicit lesbian love poetry.

It was Robert Browning who inadvertently exposed the women, letting slip their identity before his death.

Reviewers who once praised Michael Field suddenly no longer found his work to their taste.

But the Michael Fields, as their friends called them, kept on publishing.

The general public remained unaware that the Michael Field authors were lesbian lovers. Or of another fact that would have dwarfed even the Oscar Wilde scandal.

The women could afford to support themselves. They were women of independent means, both inheriting money from their family’s tobacco empire.

And by ‘their family’, I mean the same family. Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper were aunt and niece.

When Edith was young, her mother, Katherine’s older sister, became invalided after a difficult childbirth. Katherine agreed to become Edith’s legal guardian. However, a few years later, when Katherine’s mother (and Edith’s grandmother) died, a grieving Katherine left for five years in Paris.

Katherine returned home when Edith was about 11 and resumed her guardianship. After finishing school, Edith went on to University College, Bristol. Sometime before Edith turned eighteen, the two women became lovers.

Some scholars date the sexual relationship to as early as Edith’s fourteenth year, but no one knows for sure. But some now accuse Katherine, with good reason,  of grooming — if not child abuse.

However the relationship began, it endured a lifetime.

The women wrote together, slept together and kept a joint diary which leaves no doubt about the nature of their relationship.

Among the many eccentric details of their lives, although they never acted on it, both preferred men over women, except for each other.

The Michael Fields themselves married — more a couple than even poet friends Robert and Elizabeth Barret Browning. Robert and Elizabeth might be man and wife, but they wrote separately, unlike Katherine and Edith who were joined in all things.

“Let no man think he can put asunder what God has joined,” Katharine wrote in a letter about their relationship.

Katherine and Edith also defiantly defined their relationship in verse.

My Love and I took hands and swore, Against the world, to be Poets and lovers evermore.

In 1913, Edith became terminally ill with cancer. Katherine nursed her to the end, while guarding a terrible secret. She too had been diagnosed with cancer.

She haemorrhaged during Edith’s funeral and died nine months later.

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