The Lesbian Muse and Poetic Identity, 1889–1930 examines the role of contemporary muse figures in the work of six late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century women poets: Michael Field (Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper), Olive Custance, Amy Lowell, H.D. and Bryher. My focus in this book is distinctive in three main ways: firstly, in contrast to previous studies of the muse in nineteenth- and twentieth-century women's, poetry, which tend to focus on historical, dead or mythological muse figures (such as Sappho and the Virgin Mary), this book focuses on the ethical implications of turning a living, contemporary person into a muse. This raises important questions that form the backbone of my study, such as: how does a real person become ‘textualized’ as a poem? Is this a problematic form of objectification, or a loving act of immortalization? I will explore such issues and problems specific to the contemporary muse, including the gaze, objectification, ventriloquism, silencing and battles for subject position. The latter issue is particularly relevant when the muse is also a poet, as within a collaborative writing dynamic such as that of Bradley and Cooper (who wrote together as ‘Michael Field’).

Secondly, this study is distinctive in that it crosses the temporal boundary of the ‘1900’ divide, comparing fin-de-siècle, and modernist poets’ constructions of the muse across approximately a forty-year period, a temporal scope roughly compassed by the ‘landmarks’ of 1889 (the publication year of Michael Field's, first poetic volume Long Ago) and 1930 (the year in which H.D. and Bryher produced the film Borderline)