Frances Cornford

"" Frances Crofts Cornford (née Darwin; March 30, 1886 - August 19, 1960) was an English poet, "perhaps known chiefly, and unfairly, for the sadly comic poem 'To a Fat Lady Seen from a Train'”.

Life
She was the daughter of the botanist Francis Darwin and Ellen Crofts, born into the Darwin — Wedgwood family. She was a granddaughter of the British naturalist Charles Darwin. Her elder half-brother was the golf writer Bernard Darwin. She was raised in Cambridge, among a dense social network of aunts, uncles, and cousins, and was educated privately.

In 1909, Frances Darwin married Francis Cornford, a classicist and poet. They had 5 children:
 * Helena (b. 1913)
 * John (1915-1936), a poet and Communist who was killed in the Spanish Civil War.
 * Christopher (1917-1993), an artist and writer
 * Clare, who became the mother of Matthew Chapman
 * Hugh

Frances Cornford published several books of verse, including Poems (1910), Spring Morning (1915), Autumn Midnight (1923), and Different Days (1928). Mountains and Molehills (1935) was illustrated with woodcuts by Cornford's cousin Gwen Raverat.

She is buried at the Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground in Cambridge.

Writing
Her poems include The Guitarist Tunes Up:

''With what attentive courtesy he bent  Over his instrument;''

Not as a lordly conqueror who could

Command both wire and wood,

But as a man with a loved woman might,

Inquiring with delight

What slight essential things she had to say

Before they started, he and she, to play.

One of Frances Cornford's poems was a favourite of the late Philip Larkin and his lover Maeve Brennan. All Souls' Night uses the superstition that a dead lover will appear to a still faithful partner on that November date. Maev, many years after Larkin's death, would re-read the poem on All Souls:

My love came back to me 

Under the November tree 

''Shelterless and dim. ''

He put his hand upon my shoulder,

He did not think me strange or older,

''Nor I him. ''

Although the myth enhances the poem - it can be read as the meeting of older, former lovers.

Recognition
Frances Cornford was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1959.

Publications

 * Poems (1910)
 * Spring Morning (1915)
 * Autumn Midnight (1923)
 * Different Days (1928)
 * Before and After Socrates (1932)
 * Mountains and Molehills (1934)
 * Poems from the Russian (1943)
 * Travelling Home & Other Poems (1948)
 * Collected Poems (1954)
 * On a Calm Shore (1960)
 * Fifteen Poems from the French (1976)
 * Frances Cornford: Selected Poems (1996)

Except where noted, bibliographical information is from Poetry Archive.