Adelaide Anne Procter

Legends and Lyrics (Dodo Press) Adelaide Anne Procter

Adelaide Anne Procter (1825-1864) was an English poet. She was the eldest daughter of the poet Bryan Procter. She took much interest in social questions affecting women. She wrote the well-known songs Cleansing Fires and The Lost Chord, and among her many hymns are I do not ask, O Lord, that Life may be, and My God, I thank Thee who hast made. She began to contribute to Household Words in 1853 and adopted the name of "Mary Berwick, " so that the editor, Charles Dickens, should not be prejudiced by his friendship for the Procters. Many of her poems were first published in Household Words and All the Year Round and afterwards collected under the title of Legends and Lyrics (1858-1861), which was considered as her principal work. Her unambitious verses dealing with simple emotional themes in a simple manner have a charm which is scarcely explicable on the ground of high literary merit, but which is due rather to the fact that they are the cultured expression of an earnest and beneficent life.