27 March 2018

Joan Adeney Easdale, aka Sophie Curly, in Wilford Hill Cemetery, Nottingham

The grave of the poet Joan Adeney Easdale is in Wilford Hill Cemetery, Nottingham. She re-invented herself in Nottingham as Sophie Curly,* a well-known figure, particularly in the city centre pubs. In the 1930s Leonard and Virginia Woolf published three books of poems by her; she married the geneticist Jim Rendel, who also had (albeit slightly distant) Bloomsbury connections: his father's uncle was Lytton Strachey, and his mother's sister was Frances Partridge. Her grave calls her by her three names: Joan Adeney Easdale, Joan Rendel, and Sophie Curly.

My comments on Celia Robertson's biography of her grandmother, Who Was Sophie?: My Grandmother, Poet and Stranger, are here.

*Although Celia Robertson calls her grandmother 'Sophie Curly' throughout her book, and although 'Sophie' and 'Sophia Curly' are inscribed on her grave, there are a few incorrect references online to her as 'Sophie Curley'.

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