author
Adelaide Anne Procter
1825–1864
A Victorian poet with a strong social conscience, she wrote popular, heartfelt verse while supporting causes for women and people living in poverty. Her work was widely read in her lifetime and later reached even more readers through songs, hymns, and anthologies.
3 Audiobooks
A House to Let
by Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, Adelaide Anne Procter
Legends and Lyrics. Part 1
by Adelaide Anne Procter
Legends and Lyrics. Part 2
by Adelaide Anne Procter
About the author
Born in London on October 30, 1825, she grew up in a lively literary circle: her father was the poet Bryan Waller Procter, who wrote as Barry Cornwall. She began publishing young, and her poems appeared in Charles Dickens's journals Household Words and All the Year Round, sometimes under the name Mary Berwick.
Alongside her writing, she was known for practical charity work and for supporting efforts to improve opportunities for women, especially women who were unemployed. She also contributed to feminist periodicals, and this mix of feeling, faith, and concern for everyday hardship shaped much of her poetry.
Her best-known books include Legends and Lyrics, which helped make her one of the most popular poets of her day. She died in London on February 2, 1864, at just 38, but her poems continued to be widely printed and remembered after her death.