"What of this love? Where doth it dwell?
concentrate, and yet harboring.
Precious against a precious thing,
a pearl within its shell."
Michael Field was the shared pseudonym of Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper, Victorian poets and lesbian lovers who collaboratively authored eight books of poetry and twenty-seven verse dramas. This edition presents four poems of theirs which reflect on queer intimacy, concealed identity, and joint authorship, enclosed in a carefully designed wrapper whose intricate folds mimic the whorls of a shell, an image which recurs throughout the poems.
Printed in various sizes of Caslon. 6"x9" when closed. Edition of 15, originally commissioned for the Lyric Thinking Model Research Collection at Yale University's Bass Library.