SOCIAL REFORMER AND A COMPELLING
 AND REMARKABLE WOMAN.

Born in London, the first child of Bryan Waller Procter (the poet "Barry Cornwall") and Anne Skepper, Adelaide Anne was a highly gifted child, attaining considerably proficiency in geometry, piano, drawing, French, German and Italian.  She was also a voracious reader.

Adelaide's early poetry was presented to her parents' distinguished literary circle in manuscript form.  At eighteen, she contributed to the "Book of Beauty" and in 1853 to Household Words under the pseudonym "Mary Berwick" in order that the editor, Charles Dickens, should not be prejudiced by his friendship with the Procter family.  Dickens was so attracted to Adelaide's first poem that he asked 'Mary Berwick' to send in further contributions, only discovering much later — and rather by accident — the poet's true identity.  In the following six years the magazine published much of Adelaide's poetry, her poems also appearing in All the Year Round, Cornwall and Good Words.  The first series of Adelaide's principal work, Legends and Lyrics, appeared in 1858 and ran through nine editions in seven years; a second series published in 1860 met with similar success.  In 1866, a further edition appeared  together with an introduction by Charles Dickens, and there have been numerous reprints of Legends and Lyrics to the present day.  Believed to have been Queen Victoria's favourite poet, Adelaide is reputed to have sold more volumes of poetry during the Victorian era than any other poet except Tennyson.

In her mid-twenties, Adelaide became a Roman Catholic, an act that appears to have influenced her poetry for much of her Legends and Lyrics is infused with a strong Catholic sensibility suggestive of the 'convert's fervour.'  It is unsurprising that her devotional lyrics were used in both Catholic and Protestant hymnals, examples being I do not ask, O Lord, that Life may be, and My God, I thank Thee who hast made.
 

Adelaide visited the sick, befriended the destitute and homeless, taught, and endeavoured to help the less fortunate of her own sex.  Her devotional lyrics,  A Chaplet of Verses, was published in 1862 as a benefit for Providence Row, a night refuge for homeless women and children opened in 1860 under the care of the Sisters of Mercy.  Adelaide was generous yet practical with the income derived from her poetry, perhaps feeling guilty that her growing success was over-shadowing her father's reputation as a poet; "Papa is a poet.  I only write verses."
 

In 1858, Adelaide and some feminist friends founded The English Woman's Journal (once referred to by Adelaide, perhaps contemptuously, as a "moral engine"), its main aim being to urge women to enter the workforce as professionals.  Many of the Journal's articles gave accounts of mothers' meetings, temperance campaigns, industrial and ragged schools, cottage hospitals and local refuges, and of the involvement of women's in their operation and management.  Although probably more influential than its low circulation - below 500 per edition - would suggest, the Journal's middle-class intellectual content held limited appeal.  Financial loss together with religious and other differences among its proprietors eventually brought it to a close in 1864.  Adelaide's best-known lyric, 'A Lost Chord', first appeared in the Journal, later becoming highly successful as a song set to music by Sir Arthur Sullivan (see Sheet Music).

In 1859, Adelaide was appointed by the 'National Association for the Promotion of Social Science' to a committee that sought to discover ways for more women to enter the workforce.  Together with Bessie Rayner Parkes, Jessie Boucherett, Isa Craig and Matilda Hays, she also helped to establish the 'Society for Promoting the Employment of Women'..... "for girls and young women, where they may be specifically trained to work in shops by being thoroughly well instructed in accounts, book-keeping etc."  An employment register was set up, and soon various enterprises were under way including a printing house, The Victoria Press, for whom, in 1861, Adelaide edited a miscellany entitled "Victoria Regia" to which members of the literati contributed.  The book was set up in type by women compositors under the direction of Emily Faithfull—copies in good condition now command high prices on the antiquarian book market

Although better known as a poet than a social reformer in her lifetime, Adelaide worked tirelessly for better conditions for women in society.  Sadly, she contracted tuberculosis.  The cure at Malvern was tried in vain and, after an illness of fifteen months, she died calmly at the age of 38.  She was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery.  Her friends believed that overwork probably shortened her life.

Adelaide is one of the more important 19th Century women poets to be reassessed in recent years.  Her unambitious verses deal with simple emotional themes in a simple manner, and "have a charm which is scarcely explicable on the ground of high literary merit, but which is due rather to the fact that they are the cultured expression of an earnest and beneficent life" (Britannica, 1911).  Among the best known of her poems are "The Angels Story", "The Legend of Bregenz" and "The Legend of Provence"; in her poem "Philip and Mildred", she urges women not to live their lives in the shadows of men.  Many of her poems became songs and hymns (e.g. "Per Pacem ad Lucem" and "Thankfulness") also became very popular.

Not only was Adelaide a significant figure in the Victorian literary landscape, but as a key member of the Langham Place Circle of campaigning women (together with Barbara Bodichon, Bessie Rayner Parkes, Isa Craig and Jessie Boucherett) she worked tirelessly to promote female employment.  Many of her poems are concerned with anonymous and displaced women who struggle to realise and consolidate an identity and a place in a harsh, male-dominated world.  Loved and admired by her father, her editor, Charles Dickens, and her friend W. M. Thackeray, Adelaide Anne Procter wrote from the heart of London literary circles and, from this position, mounted a subtle and creative critique of the ideas and often gendered positions adopted by male predecessors and contemporaries such as John Keble, Robert Browning...... and Charles Dickens himself.

Memoirs of Adelaide were left by Charles Dickens and Bessie Rayner Belloc.