Naden's grandparents' home, Pakenham House, 20 Charlotte Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham
Constance Caroline Woodhill Naden (24 January 1858–23 December 1889) was an English writer, poet and philosopher. She studied, wrote and lectured on philosophy and science, alongside publishing two volumes of poetry. Several collected works were published following her death at the young age of 31. In her honour, Robert Lewins established the Constance Naden Medal and had a bust of her installed at Mason Science College (now the University of Birmingham). William Ewart Gladstone considered her one of the nineteenth century's foremost female poets.
Constance Naden was born on 24 January 1858[1] at 15 Francis Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham, England to Caroline Ann Woodhill Naden who died within two weeks of giving birth, and Thomas Naden, an architect, later president of the Birmingham Architectural Association.[2] She was brought up by her mother's parents, Caroline and Josiah Woodhill,[3] from 12 days old until her grandparents' deaths.[1] Naden's well-read and devout baptist grandparents lived at Pakenham House, Edgbaston.[2][4] Her father lived with the Woodhills for a time, but by 1871 the census shows that he was living nearby with a new wife and Naden's four half-siblings aged between three and seven.[1][5] At age eight Naden was sent to a local Unitarian day school, where she developed a talent for painting.[2][4] She submitted some paintings to the Birmingham Society of Artists, one of which (titled 'Bird's Nest and Wild Roses') was accepted for display at the Society's Spring Exhibition in 1878.[2]
She became interested in philosophy, languages and the sciences. In 1879, Naden attended the Birmingham and Midland Institute to study botany and French,[2][4] and from 1881 to 1887 attended Mason Science College to study physics, geology, chemistry, physiology, and zoology;[2][4] she also became a member of the Birmingham Natural History Society.[2] Naden also edited the Mason College magazine.[6] In 1885 she won the "Paxton prize" for an essay upon the geology of the district.[2] In 1887 she won the "Heslop" gold medal for her long essay, Induction and Deduction, published after her death.[2]
Philosophy
From the late 1870s onwards Naden developed a philosophy called Hylo-Idealism in collaboration with Robert Lewins, MD, whom she first met in 1876 and corresponded with for the rest of her life. The key principle of this philosophy is that "Man is the maker of his own Cosmos, and all his perceptions – even those which seem to represent solid, extended and external objects – have a merely subjective existence, bounded by the limits moulded by the character and conditions of his sentient being."[7]
Naden published a number of essays defending this view, in the Journal of Science,Knowledge,The Agnostic Annual and other periodicals.[2][4] She used such signatures as "C.N.", "C.A." and "Constance Arden".[6]
Naden was interested in Herbert Spencer's concept of a unifying philosophy explaining the universe through the principles of evolution.[8] In his work The Social Organism (1860), Spencer compared society to a living organism and argued that, just as biological organisms evolve through natural selection, society evolves and increases in complexity.[9]
Poetic writing
In 1881, Naden published her first volume of poetry Songs and Sonnets of Springtime.[2][4] This is a diverse collection, and her sonnet sequence that describes the changing of the seasons is particularly notable.[10]
Later life
Naden's grandmother Woodhill died on 21 June 1887[nb 1] and she inherited a considerable fortune, which allowed her to travel to Constantinople (Istanbul), Palestine, India, and Egypt[2][4] with her friend the educationalist and campaigner for women's right to higher education, Madeline Daniell.[11]
She returned to England in June 1888 and bought a house on Park Street, Grosvenor Square,[2] which she shared with Daniell.[3] She raised funding to allow Indian women to study medicine and became a member of the National Indian Association.[3] She joined the Aristotelian Society, endeavoured to form a Spencer society, and belonged to various societies of benevolent aims. On 22 October 1889 she delivered an address upon Mr. Herbert Spencer's Principles of Sociology to the sociological section at Mason College.[2] She also spoke about the need for women's suffrage at public events, as recorded by reports in the Women's Penny Paper.[12][13]
Naden was described as:
slight and tall, with a delicate face and 'clear blue-grey eyes.' She was regular and active in her habits. She had a penetrating voice, and was thoroughly self-possessed in public speaking.[2]
While some noted her tendency towards sarcasm in formal debates and academic discussions, she was well-loved and had very warm personal and intellectual friendships. This is attested to by the poignant remembrances of her friends in the posthumous Memoir, for example Prof. Charles Lapworth wrote that he saw her "not so much a student, [but] as an interested and sympathetic fellow-worker, and in her early death I have lost one of the best and dearest of my personal friends".[1]
Illness and death
The grave of Constance Naden in Key Hill Cemetery, photographed in 2015 prior to restoration.
In 1889 a diagnosis of infected ovarian cysts was deemed to require surgery; on 5 December she was operated on by Lawson Tait, and while initially this was a success, on 23 December she died of a related infection.[14] Naden's last letter to Robert Lewins, which is printed on the opening pages of the 1891 essay collection Further Reliques of Constance Naden details the circumstances of the surgery and her worries regarding it.[15] She was buried in the nonconformist Key Hill Cemetery, Birmingham.[16] The gravestone was badly damaged over the course of the twentieth century, and in September 2017 a campaign was launched to replace it with a more fitting memorial.[17] A rededication ceremony for the new gravestone took place on Saturday 11 May 2019.[18]
Remembrance
Naden was lauded after her death for her philosophical writings, by Robert Lewins, M.D.,[19] her contributions to poetry, her support of the women's suffrage cause in popular women's periodicals,[20] and for her "Pantheistic view of immortality" by William Ewart Gladstone,[21] in which he ranked her among the nineteenth century's top female poets.[22]Herbert Spencer, who had been an important influence on her work, remarked: "I can think of no woman, save 'George Eliot,' in whom there has been this union of high philosophical capacity with extensive acquisition. Unquestionably her subtle intelligence would have done much in furtherance of rational thought; and her death has entailed a serious loss."[23] Lewins founded the Constance Naden Medal at Mason College in her honour,[21] which is awarded each year, first for the "best competitive philosophical essay" and now for the best Faculty of Arts master's degree thesis at the University of Birmingham.[24] Lewins also commissioned a bust of Naden which he presented to Mason's College. It sits on a plinth of three books, the spine of which are inscribed "Songs and Sonnets of Springtime and A Modern Apostle, The Elixir of Life, etc." on the front and "Induction and Deduction and Hylo-Idealism" on the back.[24] It was originally placed in the college's library. Mason College became the University of Birmingham in 1900, and the bust stands in the Cadbury Research Library Reading Room.[24]
On 14 December 2009, the Birmingham Civic Society provided a commemorative blue plaque which was unveiled by the Lord Mayor. It is located at her childhood home, Pakenham House 20 Charlotte Road, Edgbaston. The inscription reads "Constance C.W. Naden 1858–1889 Poet, Scientist and Philosopher lived here for most of her life."[25]
Naden's grave in Key Hill Cemetery is shared with her mother and maternal grandparents. During the twentieth century the stone was broken up and buried by the city council along with other memorials in the area; in 2010 it was excavated by the Friends of the Cemetery but it remained illegible. On 11 May 2019, following a successful fundraising campaign by the Constance Naden Trust, a rededication ceremony was held to mark the installation of Constance Naden's new gravestone.[26] The replacement stone reproduces the text on the original but draws additional attention to Naden's achievements with the words 'Poet, philosopher, artist, Scientist' newly inscribed near the top of the stone along with a line from her 1881 poem 'The Pantheist's Song of Immortality': 'For earth is not as though thou ne'er hadst been'.[27]
Posthumous publications
Three books were published posthumously, Induction and deduction, and other essays (1890), Further Reliques of Constance Naden (1891) and The Complete Poetical Works of Constance Naden (1894).[2][28]
Critical reception
Naden's poetry has received increasing attention since the 1980s, as people sought to recover lost women's voices. A range of scholarship on her life and works has appeared, with particular focus on the interplay between literature and science in her works, her relationship with freethought, and her proto-feminist ideas. Clare Stainthorp has published an overview of the first three decades of critical writings on Naden, in which she also suggests avenues for future research.[29] In 2019, Stainthorp's book Constance Naden: Scientist, Philosopher, Poet provided the first in depth consideration of Naden's life and explored the significance of her published and unpublished poems and essays.[30]
Notes
↑ Naden's Grandfather Woodhill died previously on 27 December 1881.[2]
Related Research Articles
This article focuses on poetry from the United Kingdom written in the English language. The article does not cover poetry from other countries where the English language is spoken, including Republican Ireland after December 1922.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1889.
Ottava rima is a rhyming stanza form of Italian origin. Originally used for long poems on heroic themes, it later came to be popular in the writing of mock-heroic works. Its earliest known use is in the writings of Giovanni Boccaccio.
Mathilde Blind, was a German-born English poet, fiction writer, biographer, essayist and critic. In the early 1870s she emerged as a pioneering female aesthete in a mostly male community of artists and writers. By the late 1880s she had become prominent among New Woman writers such as Vernon Lee, Amy Levy, Mona Caird, Olive Schreiner, Rosamund Marriott Watson, and Katharine Tynan. She was praised by Algernon Charles Swinburne, William Michael Rossetti, Amy Levy, Edith Nesbit, Arthur Symons and Arnold Bennett. Her much-discussed poem The Ascent of Man presents a distinctly feminist response to the Darwinian theory of evolution.
Amy Judith Levy was an English essayist, poet, and novelist best remembered for her literary gifts; her experience as the second Jewish woman at Cambridge University, and as the first Jewish student at Newnham College, Cambridge; her feminist positions; her friendships with others living what came later to be called a "New Woman" life, some of whom were lesbians; and her relationships with both women and men in literary and politically activist circles in London during the 1880s.
Constance Fenimore Woolson was an American novelist, poet, and short story writer. She was a grandniece of James Fenimore Cooper, and is best known for fictions about the Great Lakes region, the American South, and American expatriates in Europe.
Janet Hamilton was a nineteenth-century Scottish poet.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
George Barlow was an English poet, who sometimes wrote under the pseudonym James Hinton.
May Kendall was an English poet, novelist, and satirist. She is best known as the co-author of the novel That Very Mab and the poetry collections Dreams to Sell and Songs from Dreamland. She studied at Somerville College, Oxford.
Elizabeth Rayner Belloc was one of the most prominent English feminists and campaigners for women's rights in Victorian times and also a poet, essayist and journalist.
The literary tradition of Birmingham originally grew out of the culture of religious puritanism that developed in the town in the 16th and 17th centuries. Birmingham's location away from established centres of power, its dynamic merchant-based economy and its weak aristocracy gave it a reputation as a place where loyalty to the established power structures of church and feudal state were weak, and saw it emerge as a haven for free-thinkers and radicals, encouraging the birth of a vibrant culture of writing, printing and publishing.
Emily Jane Pfeiffer was a Welsh poet and philanthropist. She supported women's suffrage and higher education for women, as well as producing feminist poems.
Adelaide Anne Procter was an English poet and philanthropist.
Robert Lewins was a British army surgeon and philosopher. He is best known for his collaboration with Constance Naden on their philosophical theory called hylo-idealism.
Romanticism was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century. Scholars regard the publishing of William Wordsworth's and Samuel Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads in 1798 as probably the beginning of the movement in England, and the crowning of Queen Victoria in 1837 as its end. Romanticism arrived in other parts of the English-speaking world later; in the United States, it arrived around 1820.
Madeline Margaret Daniell was a Scottish educationalist and campaigner for women's rights to higher education.
Alice Williams Brotherton was an American author of poetry, essays, reviews, children's stories, and lyrics. Though she hailed from Indiana, she lived most of her life in Cincinnati, Ohio, serving as president of the Cincinnati Woman's Press Club. She wrote critical essays and addresses on Shakespeare, while many of her poems were set to music in the United States and in England. Contemporary poets of Ohio included Helen L. Bostwick and Kate Brownlee Sherwood.
References
1 2 3 4 William Richard Hughes; Charles Lapworth; Sir William Augustus Tilden; Robert Lewins (1890). Constance Naden: A Memoir. Bickers & Son. p.page. Retrieved 20 July 2013.
↑ Herbert Spencer (1860). "The Social Organism". The Westminster Review. reprinted in Herbert Spencer (1892), Essays: Scientific, Political and Speculative, London and New York{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
↑ William Richard Hughes; Charles Lapworth; Sir William Augustus Tilden; Robert Lewins (1890). Constance Naden: A Memoir. Bickers & Son. pp.89–90. Retrieved 20 July 2013.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
