May Kendall
Encyclopedia
May Kendall (1861 – ?1943) was an English poet
, novelist, and satirist
. She is best known as the co-author of the novel That Very Mab and the poetry collections Dreams to Sell and Songs from Dreamland.
Possibly her most anthologized poem, Lay of the Trilobite, is a satire of the popular English response to Darwin's
evolutionary theory
.
In 1895 Kendall partially gave up professional writing in order to more fully devote her life to social reform. She worked predominantly with the Rowntree Family in York.
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, novelist, and satirist
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
. She is best known as the co-author of the novel That Very Mab and the poetry collections Dreams to Sell and Songs from Dreamland.
Possibly her most anthologized poem, Lay of the Trilobite, is a satire of the popular English response to Darwin's
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
evolutionary theory
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
.
In 1895 Kendall partially gave up professional writing in order to more fully devote her life to social reform. She worked predominantly with the Rowntree Family in York.
Works
- (with Andrew LangAndrew LangAndrew Lang was a Scots poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology. He is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. The Andrew Lang lectures at the University of St Andrews are named after him.- Biography :Lang was born in Selkirk...
) That Very Mab (1885) - Dreams to Sell (1887)
- Songs from Dreamland (1894)
- Turkish Bonds (1895)
- (with Benjamin Rowntree) How the Labourer Lives: A Study of the Rural Labour Problem (1913)