Click here to access the historic recordings of Anne Ridler as well as a brief biography of this author.

Anne Ridler (1912-2001) moved in literature throughout her life; she was the daughter of writers, with more in the extended family, and joined Faber and Faber's poetry department while in her early twenties. She edited many collections and anthologies while at Faber and Faber, and worked closely with the company's Poetry Editor, T S Eliot. He features as a character in several of the introductions she makes to her poems. Just before her death, she was made an OBE for services to literature.

Her recording was made on 22 March 2001 at her home in Oxford and was produced by Richard Carrington. From this page, you can hear the voice of Anne Ridler reading four of her poems: "Expectans Expectavi," "Villanelle for the Middle of the Way," Choosing a Name," and "Snakeshead Fritillaries."

Poetry Archive exists to help make poetry accessible, relevant and enjoyable to a wide audience. It came into being as a result of a meeting, in a recording studio, between Andrew Motion, soon after he became U.K. Poet Laureate in 1999, and the recording producer, Richard Carrington. They agreed about how enjoyable and illuminating it is to hear poets reading their work and about how regrettable it was that, even in the recent past, many important poets had not been properly recorded.

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