Among the most popular poets of the Edwardian era, Adela Florence Cory Nicolson rose to fame on a wave of interest in the exotic with her racy Indian love lyrics published under the pseudonym "Laurence Hope." A female rival to Rudyard Kipling, though with a sensibility more akin to the Decadent poets, Nicolson was recognized by contemporary poets, including Thomas Hardy, Arthur Symons, James Elroy Flecker, and Edith Thomas, who admired her passion, sincerity, and abundant, if often uncontrolled, lyrical gifts. Although her brief literary career was cut short by suicide in 1904, her poetry remained popular for decades, and, though critically neglected for many years, her unconventional life and poetry have experienced a revival of interest in recent years.

Laurence Hope was born Adela Florence Cory in Gloucestershire on 9 April 1865 to Arthur Cory, an officer in the Bengal Army, and Fanny Elizabeth Griffin Cory. Adela was the second...