Adelaide Anne Procter | |
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Born | London, England, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland | 30 October 1825
Died | 2 February 1864 London,[1] England, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland | (aged 38)
Resting place | Kensal 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 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 20th-century critics have discussed her work because of Procter's religious beliefs, but her poetry is beginning to be re-evaluated as showing technical skill.
Procter never married. Her health suffered, possibly due to overwork, and she died of tuberculosis at the age of 38.