Biography

Frances Crofts was born in Cambridge on 30 March 1886, the only child of Sir Francis Darwin (1848–1925) and his second wife, Ellen Wordsworth Crofts (1856–1903), daughter of John Crofts, of Leeds. Ellen was a lecturer in English at Newnham College, Cambridge. Francis Darwin, then lecturer in botany at Cambridge, was the third son of Charles Darwin, whom he had helped with his biological researches. Frances was half-sister to the writer and golfing expert Bernard Darwin, the only child of her father's first marriage. Her education was private, and during her childhood her chief associates were her cousins, the children of George Darwin and Horace Darwin. Her mother died when she was seventeen; her father then moved their home for a short time to London, but soon returned to Cambridge where Frances spent most of the rest of her life. In the summer of 1908 members of the Cambridge Marlowe Dramatic Society arranged a performance of Comus as part of a Milton tercentenary celebration at Christ's College, where Frances Darwin met Francis Macdonald Cornford (1874–1943), a fellow of Trinity College and afterwards Laurence professor of ancient philosophy at Cambridge, who had been cast for the part of Comus. They were married in 1909. Their home at Conduit Head off the Madingley Road soon became a meeting-place for artists and men of letters such as Will Rothenstein, Eric Gill, Lowes Dickinson, Bertrand Russell, and occasional visitors such as Rabindranath Tagore. The Cornfords had five children. Their eldest son, (Rupert) John Cornford, was killed in Spain, in December 1936. The second son, Christopher Francis Cornford, became an artist and in 1963 was appointed the first dean of the Royal College of Art in London. Frances Darwin started writing poetry at sixteen and subsequently published enough to entitle her to a distinguished place among the minor poets of the Georgian period and later years. Her first volume, Poems (1910), brought somewhat embarrassing fame for 'To a Fat Lady Seen from a Train', which became a standard anthology piece and was parodied by G. K. Chesterton. One of her early books was a ‘morality’ play, 'Death and the Princess' (1912). With the publication of later volumes of poetry, 'Different Days' (1928), 'Mountains and Molehills' (1934), and 'Travelling Home' (1948), the quiet but distinctive quality of her work began to be recognized. In 1954 her volume 'Collected Poems' was the official ‘choice’ of the Poetry Book Society and in 1959 she was awarded the queen's medal for poetry. Frances Cornford died of heart failure at her home, 10 Millington Road, Cambridge, on 19 August 1960. She was buried at St Giles's cemetery, Cambridge.

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