{\b Adelaide Anne Procter (pseudonym 'Mary Berwick')}.

{\b Date of Birth}.: 30 October 1825

{\b Date of Death}.: 2 February 1864

{\b Works}.

Legends and Lyrics: A Book of Verses,  first series (1858), second series 
(1861), ed. The Victorian Regia: A Volume of Original Contributions in Poetry 
and Prose  (1861), Chaplet of Verses  (1861), The Poems of Adelaide Anne 
Procter  (published posthumously 1873).

{\b Featured Works}.

'A Doubting Heart'.

{\b General Comment}.

Adelaide Anne Procter was a poet and reformer. She was born in London, the 
first child of Bryan Walter Procter ('Barry Cornwall'), a poet, and Anne 
Procter. Highly gifted as a child, she studied geometry, piano, drawing, 
French, German and Italian. Her early poetry was given to her parents' 
literary circle in manuscript form. In 1853 she submitted poems to Charles 
Dickens's Household Words , and in the following six years the magazine 
published many of her poems. Her poetry was also published in All the Year 
Round, Cornwall  and Good Words, its popularity deriving from its mixture of 
nostalgia, moral idealism and emotionalism. 'Philip and Mildred' urges women 
not to live their lives in the shadows of men. 

In her mid-twenties she became a Roman Catholic, and this influenced her 
writing. Her perception of social ills was always intermixed with a religious 
sensibility. Her devotional lyrics have been used in Catholic and Protestant 
hymnals, and A Chaplet of Verse  (1826) was published as a benefit for 
England's first Catholic refuge for homeless women and children. She and some 
feminist friends founded The English Woman's Journal  (1858) to urge women to 
enter the workforce as professionals. Her best-known lyric, 'A Lost Chord' 
appeared in the Journal . She worked tirelessly for better conditions for 
women in society, and was appointed by the National Association for the 
Promotion of Social Science to a committee which sought to discover ways for 
more women to enter the workforce. She died aged 39, and her contemporaries 
felt that overwork probably shortened her life. Charles Dickens wrote a memoir 
for her in 1866.