Ridler, Anne Barbara Bradby

▪ 2002

      British poet (b. July 30, 1912, Rugby, Warwickshire, Eng.—d. Oct. 15, 2001, Oxford, Eng.), wrote verse that was devotional and meditative, reflecting her Christian faith, and that dealt with domestic concerns such as marriage and motherhood. Her Elizabethan sense of form and her use of complex metaphors led critics to compare her to the 17th-century Metaphysical poets, particularly George Herbert and Thomas Traherne. She also wrote verse dramas, wrote and translated opera librettos, and served as the editor of a number of anthologies and collections. Ridler's father, a poet, was headmaster of Rugby School, and her mother was a children's writer. Members on both sides of the family were distinguished in literary, artistic, and clerical circles. She earned a degree from King's College, London, in 1932. From 1935 to 1940 she worked for Faber and Faber, part of this time as secretary to T.S. Eliot and as an assistant in publishing The Criterion. In 1938 she married Vivian Ridler, who later (1958–78) was printer to the University of Oxford. He published Poems, her first volume, in 1939. Other volumes included Some Time After and Other Poems (1972), New and Selected Poems (1988), and Collected Poems (1994; rev. ed. 1997). Verse dramas included Cain (1943) and The Trial of Thomas Cranmer (1956). She collaborated with composers as a librettist and did highly regarded performing translations of the librettos of operas by Cavalli, Monteverdi, and Mozart. The Little Book of Modern Verse (1941) and the Faber Book of Modern Verse (1951; rev. ed. 1960) were among the anthologies she edited. She also edited the poems of Traherne and the writings of Charles Williams, an early influence. In 1998 she received the Cholmondeley Prize for Poetry, and in 2001 she was appointed OBE.

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