author
Mathilde Blind
1841–1896
A bold Victorian writer who moved between poetry, criticism, fiction, and biography, she brought political conviction and literary ambition to everything she wrote. Her life as an exile’s stepdaughter and an independent woman of letters gave her work an outsider’s energy that still feels striking.
3 Audiobooks
Jules Bastien-Lepage and his art : a memoir
by André Theuriet, Mathilde Blind, George Clausen, Walter Sickert
George Eliot
by Mathilde Blind
The Ascent of Man
by Mathilde Blind
About the author
Born in Mannheim in 1841, Mathilde Blind was raised in a politically radical household and came to England after her family left the turmoil that followed the 1848 revolutions. Writing in English, she built a career as a poet, novelist, essayist, reviewer, translator, and biographer, becoming one of the notable women writers in late Victorian literary life.
Blind first published poems under the pseudonym Claude Lake, and over time she became known for work that mixed feeling, intellect, and strong moral and political interests. She also wrote studies of major literary figures, including Percy Bysshe Shelley and George Eliot, showing the same range and independence that marked her creative writing.
Although she is less widely read today than some of her contemporaries, Blind’s work has continued to attract attention for its fierce intelligence, cosmopolitan background, and unusual place in nineteenth-century literature. She died in London in 1896.