Dollie Radford (1858–1920), a fin-de-siècle poet, produced diary writings and poetry that depart from dominant late Victorian norms and illuminate the constraints facing women writers in England. While existing scholarship has highlighted the subversive and socio-political dimensions of her work, Radford’s engagement with foreign languages, myth, and cross-cultural references remains underexplored. LeeAnne Richardson’s analysis of The Ransom and “A Modern Polypheme” argues that Radford reworked Greek myth to challenge inherited assumptions about sexuality, yet this reading does not address the texts examined here. Similarly, Sarah Parker situates Radford among neglected Victorian women poets and emphasizes her lyric responses to modernity and women’s urban presence, but without considering mythological or multilingual elements.

Addressing this lacuna, the present study offers a novel contribution by analyzing previously unexamined materials: selections from Radford’s unpublished diary housed at the William Andrew Clark Memorial Library (UCLA) and the poem “Orpheus” from A Light Load (1891). The analysis demonstrates how Radford’s references to foreign languages and myth function as strategies of intellectual autonomy, cultural openness, and symbolic empowerment. In doing so, the study extends discussions of revolutionary poetics in Victorian women’s writing and contributes to broader debates on multilingualism and cross-cultural expression as resources for women authors.

Authors:
Hadeel Azhar, Umm Al-Qura University, Saudi Arabia

About the Presenter(s)
Dr Hadeel Azhar is currently an Associate Professor of English Literature in the Department of English, College of Social Sciences, Umm Al-Qura University.

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/hadeel-j-azhar-9047ab211

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