The Fowl and the Pussycat

I had thought that the generous spirit of the great mid-twentieth-century editors of letters had died with them - that it was no longer to be found in the new generation of academics. My faith has been restored by Sharon Bickle's The Fowl and the Pussycat. Yes, it is clearly a labor of love, which testifies to Bickle's romance, if you will, with Bradley and Cooper. But it is also a reflection of the author's love of Victorian literature, art, culture, politics, and daily life as a whole and of her dedication to embracing and understanding everything about the past. Indeed, she shares with the Victorians themselves a love of knowledge for knowledge's sake - the kind of compendious knowledge that grows out of boundless curiosity about all phenomena. - Margaret D. Stetz, University of Delaware, author of Facing the Late Victorians and coeditor of Michael Field and Their World ""Sharon Bickle's outstanding collection of letters represents the first modern, scholarly edition of work by Michael Field, the fascinating lesbian aunt and niece who wrote poems and plays together under a single, male name for nearly the whole of their eventful lives. Not since the publication in 1933 of selected entries from Field's journals has such an important set of documents emerged. Moreover, though Field aficionados have been reading the letters and journals held by the British Library for decades now, few are even aware of these thought-filled, personal letters held by the Bodleian, or the revealing poems, and plans for plays, these letters enclose."" - Holly Laird, University of Tulsa, author of Women Coauthors