Elizabeth Daryush and the Company She Keeps

Abstract:The poetry of Elizabeth Daryush (1887–1977) is rarely read or remembered now. When it is, readers have highlighted her peculiar diction and interest in traditional forms, treating her work as an anachronism within twentieth-century poetry in English. This article situates her poems within a longer poetic history by examining the depth and variety of her engagement with the work of other poets, including medieval Persian poetry, Thomas Campion, Keats, Hopkins, Hardy, and her father, Robert Bridges. Revealing imaginative and searching rewritings of this diverse company, the article demonstrates how critics might profitably begin to redress Daryush's historical neglect.