During her lifetime Charlotte Mew was either greatly liked or greatly disliked, and now, more than fifty years after her death, those who are interested in her are very much interested. There are at least two collections of her papers which nobody is given permission to see - not quite with the feeling that she ought to be left to rest in peace, but, rather, that she shouldn't be shared indiscriminately with outsiders. She was a writer who was completely successful perhaps only two or three times (though that is enough for a lyric poet) and whose sad life, in spite of many explanations, refuses quite to be explained.

LRB 1 July 1982 | PDF Download