Afternoon Tea with Mary, John and friends

Five Leaves Bookshop

Enjoy tea and cake at the bookshop along with this new edition of a 200-year-old poetry pamphlet by Mary Bailey, lace-runner of Nottingham.

Almost 200 years after its first publication, and almost 200 years after the death of the author, we are pleased to bring back to the public domain the work of Mary Bailey. In this event her work will be read for the first time since the nineteenth century. The event will be introduced by John Goodridge. We will be joined by John Baird, Rowena Edlin-White and members of Nottingham Women’s History Group who have also been working to rediscover the voices of Nottingham women writers from the past.

This event costs £7.00 and includes tea, cake and a complimentary copy of Mary and John’s pamphlet. We can only accomodate modest numbers for afternoon tea so advance registration is essential.

Mary Bailey’s is a unique female voice in the masculine world of nineteenth-century Nottingham working-class poetry. A ‘lace-runner’ whose sore eyes and tired fingers crafted intricately embroidered garments for ‘fine ladies’ as she raised her family of nine in conditions of poverty, she published thirteen poems in a pamphlet in 1826, two years before she died, in an attempt to raise money for her family. Often song-like in their rhythms, her verses reflect the struggle to survive and live in a decent way, in the face of hardship, and of such challenges as being told she had too many children (‘To a Lady who desired me to pray for the death of my youngest child’), trying to make her customers understand what it took to make fine lace and why they should pay fairly for it (‘Petition to the British Fair’), and tackling two middle-class girls seen tormenting an insect for their pleasure (‘The Locust’). Just two, extremely fragile copies of her original pamphlet are now known to have survived. The present publication, part of a wider recovery of the rich literary past of Nottingham, a UNESCO City of Literature, brings it back into the public domain after 200 years.

John Goodridge is an expert on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century labouring-class poetry.

Afternoon Tea with Mary, John and friends

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Afternoon Tea with Mary, John and friends

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