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Oliver, Emma (c. 1840-1918).
Original manuscript poetry by a Yorkshire woman. Poems by Mrs Oliver - Sheffield Née Emma Mayday Massey.
Publisher: Sheffield;
Date of Publication: 1864
Stock Code: 15118
Manuscript comprising 16 folios bound in laid-paper wraps, titled in author’s hand to upper cover. A few spots to wraps. Internally clean. Very well-preserved. Twenty-two original poems by an amateur woman poet, in a single, highly legible hand. The poet, Emma Oliver (née Mayday Massey) is identifiable both from her unusual surnames, and from a reference to her father S[amuel] Massey, in the first poem. She was born Emma Mayday Massey in Leeds, and married Joel Oliver in 1864. The Olivers emigrated from Yorkshire to New Zealand in 1896, where Emma Oliver died. Beyond these genealogical facts in official documents, this bookseller has been unable to locate any of the richer details of Emma Oliver’s life. This document is the only evidence known to us of this otherwise obscure woman’s literary expression. The poems herein sometimes carry generic titles (’Song’, ‘The Reply’, ‘Serenade’ etc.) or titles of better-known works such as ‘The Lover’s Complaint’ aping Shakespeare. Oliver asserts her authorship twice, on the upper cover and on the first leaf. The poems wear their influences openly, romanticism is strongly felt, with poems on solitude, ‘the grave of Aporia’, and snowdrops recalling snippets from Wordsworth and Keats. Perhaps most interesting is a poem ‘Written on Reading a Volume of Byron’s Poetry’, showing this amateur poet’s response to her more notorious poetic ancestor. To our knowledge, Oliver’s work was never published. £200.00