The Ackland and Edwards Blog
Getting to know Judith Ackland – Part 2
In the previous blogpost – I described Judith's sudden departure from Bideford to the Pyrenees. She travelled alone (and abroad for the first time) to attend to Mildred, a childhood friend believed to be on the verge of death. Here we learn how Judith's correspondence...
Getting to know Judith Ackland – Part 1
Up till now Judith Ackland has been a rather shadowy figure in my research. I had only read her thoughts in her own words in a letter to Rupert Graves (see Finding Judith). Although heartfelt, that was a very formal letter. Otherwise, all the information has come from...
Mary Stella Edwards and Judith Ackland: a love story
Early in my PhD research I wondered who might play Mary Stella Edwards and Judith Ackland in a film about their lives. After much thought and debate with the archive volunteers, we came up with Haydn Gwynne to play Judith and Helen McCrory to play Mary Stella. The...
Mary Stella Edwards’ School Days: tedium before fun
What can Mary Stella Edwards' early childhood and school days tell us about her hyphenated career as poet, artist, and commercial artist? Mary Stella on holiday in Swanage, 1904: “Here a man gave me a sunshade, and I was photographed on the terrace carrying it.”...
Finding Judith Ackland in the archive
Judith Ackland remains a rather shadowy figure in the archive. She wrote just one journal (to Mary Stella’s 20+) and she seems to have left much of the business correspondence of their professional lives to Edwards. However, the relationship between Judith and Mary...
Writing poetry in the “true” way
The photo above of Mary Stella Edwards is my favourite one of her in the archive. It’s a miss-shot really. Perhaps there was a light leak in the camera. But it shows – perhaps better than words can describe – how Mary Stella Edwards wrote poetry. Queen of enjambment...
Lament for Murdered Trees
... and a Curse on Evil Men! One of the many reasons I love Mary Stella Edwards’ poetry is that she writes about the more-than-human world in such an unusual way for her time. Even the wooden furniture in her bedroom prickles with agency. In her 1920 poem ‘The...
Letters from Gilbert Murray
Archive research tends to be non-chronological. For example, I spent my early months in the archive reading Mary Stella Edwards’ letters from the 1970s and 80s. One name (apart from Judith’s) kept appearing in these letters... Gilbert Murray. Mary Stella mentioned...
Why does the archive exist?
Mary Stella Edwards actively put together the Ackland and Edwards archive in the years after Judith Ackland died. But why? The two women weren’t well-known as artists, and Edwards’ final three books of poetry were published very late in her lifetime. Might this be the...
The Dark Pool
As a typical archive rookie, I arrived at the Burton confident that the Ackland and Edwards Archive would contain the answers to all my questions. In fact, every day I spend in the archive, I leave with more questions than I arrived with. It’s rather like trying to...