Correspondence: Frances Cornford

Scope and Content

Correspondence: Frances Cornford

Administrative / Biographical History

Frances Crofts Cornford, née Darwin] (1886–1960), 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). Francis Darwin, then lecturer in botany at Cambridge, was the third son of Charles Darwin. Her education was private.

In the summer of 1908 she met Francis Macdonald Cornford (1874–1943), a fellow of Trinity College and afterwards Laurence professor of ancient philosophy at Cambridge. They were married in 1909 and had had five children; the eldest son, (Rupert) John Cornford, was killed fighting in the Spanish Civil War. 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. Rupert Brooke was one of her closest friends. She died of heart failure at her home, 10 Millington Road, Cambridge, on 19 August 1960.