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>
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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>
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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>
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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>