contacts; in particular painters and life partners Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon, near whom they settled in Richmond, London. Robert Browning was also a close friend of theirs, and they knew and admired Oscar Wilde, whose death they bitterly mourned. While they were always well connected, the early critical success was not sustained (this is often attributed to the joint identity of Field becoming known). They knew many of the aesthetic movement of the 1890s, including Walter Pater, Vernon Lee, J. A. Symonds and also Bernard Berenson. William Rothenstein was a friend. In 1899 the death of Edith's father enabled them to buy their own house as evidence of their "close marriage", although Edith saw her father's death as retribution for their lifestyle. Edith later led the way in establishing the couple as active Catholics. They wrote a number of passionate love poems to each other, and their name Michael Field was their way of declaring their inseparable oneness. Friends referred to them as the Fields, the Michaels or the Michael Fields. They had a range of pet names for each other. They also were passionately devoted to their pets, in particular a dog named Whym Chow, for whom they wrote a book of poems named after him. Their joint journal starts with an account of Bradley's passion for Alfred Gérente, an artist in stained glass and brother of Henri Gérente, who was of an English background but worked mostly in France. It goes on to document Michael Field as a figure, amongst 'his' literary counterparts, and their lives together. When Whym Chow died in 1906, the emotional pattern of the relationship was disturbed; both women became Roman Catholic converts in 1907. Their religious inclinations are reflected in their later works, where their earlier writing is influenced by classical and Renaissance culture, in its pagan aspects particularly, Sappho as understood by the late Victorians, and perhaps Walter Savage Landor. A review of their poems in 1908 noted that 'One of the London weeklies, announcing the new volume, comments on the strange anomaly that a poet of "Michael Field’s distinction should have had such slight recognition in this country. A writer in the "Academy" is quoted as saying that "he is perhaps the greatest of our living lyric poets who are actually writing at this time,” and it is claimed that those who are acquainted with the poet's work must agree