Adelaide Anne Procter (1825–1864) was a British poet and philanthropist. She worked for unemployed women and the homeless, and was actively involved with feminist groups and journals. Procter's literary career began when she was a teenager; her poems were primarily published in Charles Dickens's periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round and later appeared in book form. Her charity work and her conversion to Roman Catholicism appear to have strongly influenced her poetry, which deals mostly with such subjects as homelessness, poverty, and "fallen women". Procter was the favourite poet of Queen Victoria. Her poetry went through numerous editions in the 19th century; Coventry Patmore called her the most popular poet of the day, after Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Nonetheless, by the early 20th century her reputation had diminished. The few modern critics who have given her work attention argue that her work is significant, in part for what it reveals about how Victorian women expressed otherwise repressed feelings. Procter never married, and some of her poetry has prompted speculation that she was a lesbian. She died of tuberculosis at the age of 38.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adelaide_Anne_Procter
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1689:
The Parliament of England adopted the Bill of Rights, declaring that Englishmen possessed certain positive civil and political rights. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_Rights_1689
1773:
To prevent the unloading of tea that was taxed without their consent under the Tea Act, a group of colonists destroyed it by throwing it into Boston Harbor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party
1938:
Adolf Hitler instituted the Cross of Honour of the German Mother as an order of merit for Imperial German women. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_of_Honour_of_the_German_Mother
1960:
Two airliners collided in mid-air in heavy clouds over Staten Island, New York City, killing 134 people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_New_York_mid-air_collision
1997:
"Dennō Senshi Porygon", an episode of the Japanese television series Pokémon, induced epileptic seizures in 685 children. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denn%C5%8D_Senshi_Porygon
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
neverendum: A series of "neverending" referendums on the same issue held in an attempt to achieve an unpopular result. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/neverendum
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
Today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups … So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing. --Philip K. Dick https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick