The Reverend Edwin Emmanuel Bradford (1860–1944) was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 clergyman and Uranian

Uranian poetry

The Uranians were a small and somewhat clandestine group of male pederastic poets who published works between 1858 and 1930...

 poet and novelist. He attended Exeter College

Exeter College, Oxford

Exeter College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England and the fourth oldest college of the University. The main entrance is on the east side of Turl Street...

, Oxford, received his B.A. in 1884, and was awarded a D.D.

Doctor of Divinity

Doctor of Divinity is an advanced academic degree in divinity. Historically, it identified one who had been licensed by a university to teach Christian theology or related religious subjects....

 He was vicar

Vicar

In the broadest sense, a vicar is a representative, deputy or substitute; anyone acting "in the person of" or agent for a superior . In this sense, the title is comparable to lieutenant...

 of Nordelph

Nordelph

Nordelph is a civil parish in the English county of Norfolk.It covers an area of and had a population of 375 in 151 households as of the 2001 census.For the purposes of local government, it falls within the district of King's Lynn and West Norfolk....

, Downham Market

Downham Market

Downham Market is a town and civil parish in Norfolk, England. It lies on the edge of the Fens, on the River Great Ouse, some 20 km south of the town of King's Lynn, 60 km west of the city of Norwich and the same distance north of the city of Cambridge....

, Norfolk

Norfolk

Norfolk is a low-lying county in the East of England. It has borders with Lincolnshire to the west, Cambridgeshire to the west and southwest and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the North Sea coast and to the north-west the county is bordered by The Wash. The county...

, from 1905 to 1944. Towards the beginning of his life Bradford was an Anglo-Catholic but he subsequently became a Modernist

Liberal Christianity

Liberal Christianity, sometimes called liberal theology, is an umbrella term covering diverse, philosophically and biblically informed religious movements and ideas within Christianity from the late 18th century and onward...

. He was at one time a great friend of The Reverend S. E. Cottam

S. E. Cottam

The Reverend Samuel Elsworth Cottam, M.A. was an English poet and priest.-Biography:Cottam was educated at Exeter College, Oxford, where he was a friend of Edwin Emmanuel Bradford....

, M.A., with whom he had been an undergraduate classmate.

Bradford's verse was outspokenly homoerotic, but also remarkably popular during his lifetime given the prudery of Victorian England. W. H. Auden

W. H. Auden

Wystan Hugh Auden , who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also...

 and John Betjeman

John Betjeman

Sir John Betjeman, CBE was an English poet, writer and broadcaster who described himself in Who's Who as a "poet and hack".He was a founding member of the Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture...

, were entertained by the apparent naïvety of Bradford's poetry. Betjeman's

John Betjeman

Sir John Betjeman, CBE was an English poet, writer and broadcaster who described himself in Who's Who as a "poet and hack".He was a founding member of the Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture...

 friend George Alfred Kolkhorst

George Alfred Kolkhorst

George Alfred Kolkhorst was an Oxford don.Kolkhorst was a member of Exeter College, Oxford. He was appointed University Lecturer in Spanish in 1921 and Reader in Spanish in 1931, holding office until his death in 1958...

 collected Bradford's novels.

Bradford's work can just barely be interpreted as a sign of innocent "romantic friendship

Romantic friendship

The term romantic friendship refers to both very close but non-sexual relationship and at times physical relationship between friends, often involving a degree of physical closeness beyond that which is common in modern Western societies, and may include for example holding hands, cuddling,...

" with youths, but several verses, such as "The Bather in the Blue Grotto at Capri" and "Alan", are plainly erotically inspired. Many of his poems are direct though sometimes self-effacing pleas of love to the young males in his life. In Bradford's own words:

Here's a loyal and a loving heart,

Take it, lad, or leave it.

Works

• Sermon sketches for the Sundays of the Christian year (1907)
• Sonnets, Songs, and Ballads (1908)
• Stories of life at our great public schools (1908)
• Passing the Love of Women and Other Poems (1913)
• In Quest of Love and Other Poems (1913)
• Lays of Love and Life (1916)
• The New Chivalry and Other Poems (1918)
• The Romance of Youth and Other Poems (1920) (Archive.org e-book)
• Ralph Rawdon: a Story in Verse (1922)
• The True Aristocracy (1923)
• The Tree of Knowledge (1925)
• The Kingdom within You and Other Poems (1927)
• Strangers and Pilgrims (1929)
• Boyhood (1930)
• Boris Orloff: A Christmas Yarn (Stoke Ferry, Norfolk: Daedalus Press, 1968; a limited edition of 200 copies plus 10 copies on Japanese paper lettered from A to J)
• To Boys Unknown (1988)