Adelaide Anne Procter

Adelaide Anne Procter
Three-quarter oval portrait of a slender woman aged about 30, garbed in black. Her deep-set eyes gaze solemnly over the viewer's shoulder. Her dark, straight hair is parted in the centre without a fringe, combed over the ears, and pulled back in a low bun.
Undated portrait by Emma Gaggiotti Richards
Born(1825-10-30)30 October 1825
Died2 February 1864(1864-02-02) (aged 38)
London,[1] England, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
Resting placeKensal Green Cemetery
Occupation(s)Poet, philanthropist

Adelaide Anne Procter (30 October 1825 – 2 February 1864) was an English poet and philanthropist.

Her literary career began when she was a teenager, her poems appearing in Charles Dickens's periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round, and later in feminist journals. Her charity work and her conversion to Roman Catholicism seem to have influenced her poetry, which deals with such subjects as homelessness, poverty, and fallen women, among whom she performed philanthropic work. Procter was the favourite poet of Queen Victoria. Coventry Patmore called her the most popular poet of the day, after Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Few modern critics have rated her work, but it is still thought significant for what it reveals about how Victorian women expressed otherwise repressed feelings.

Procter never married. Her health suffered, possibly due to overwork, and she died of tuberculosis at the age of 38.

  1. ^ Janet M. Todd (ed.), British women writers: a critical reference guide, Continuum, 1989, p. 547.

© MMXXIII Rich X Search. We shall prevail. All rights reserved. Rich X Search