Best known work

• "Evolutional Erotics", from A Modern Apostle; The Elixir of Life; The Story of Clarice; and other poems, 1887

Genres

• Poetry
• Politics / Philosophy / Essays

Nom de plume

C. N., C. C. W. N., C. Arden

Social class

Middle class

Parental background

Naden was brought up by her maternal grandparents, who were wealthy through the local jewellery industry. Her mother had died within days of giving birth to Naden, and her father (a well-respected architect) remarried a couple of years later.

At publication of best known work

• Age: 29
• Marital status: Unmarried
• Number of children: 0

Physical description

Roman nose, small mouth, and broad brow. In an unpublished poem, "A Portrait", from the late 1870s, an adolescent Naden described herself quite accurately as having: "Eyes of grey, complexion fair, Brow not high, but broad & square, Coronet of dark-brown hair, Cheeks just tinted with the rose, Large, & not quite Grecian, nose, Mouth that some consider small, Stature that you could not call Either short or very tall, But about the middle height, With a figure rather slight; I have shown the outward frame Tell me now the maiden’s name." (Poems; by Constance C. W. Naden. 1875-6-7, Birmingham, Cadbury Research Library, USS 115, p. 82.)

Did you know?

In 1887, Naden was nominated as an Associate of Mason College after studying science there for six years (the highest honour awarded by the institution that was to become the University of Birmingham in 1900). She was the first women to be honoured in this way, and was seen as a figurehead for female intellectual achievement in Birmingham.

Additional information

Her Complete Poetical Works can be found and two posthumous volumes of her collected essays (Induction and Deduction and Further Reliques) plus the posthumous Memoir are available. Info about her life and works can be found at the Dangerous Women Project and https://nadensyearinsonnets.wordpress.com.