April 26, 2018

Mona Steel Price Gooden, British writer and translator, is our choice for celebrating April as Poetry Month. Her husband was an engraver, Stephen Gooden, (1892–1955), the son of Steven Thomas Gooden and Edith Camille Epps. This description of Stephen Gooden gives a wider picture of their life. Gooden was:

'one of the most distinguished designers ... in our time...[He] died very shortly after the £5 note [he designed] was issued. The Times [obituary] said: Mr. Stephen Gooden, C.B.E., R.A., [was] perhaps the most accomplished of the several artists and designers who took part in the revival of line engraving. The Times referred to his "inventiveness and concentration of design", "feeling for the page" and "purity of execution". It is mentioned that he is represented at the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Fitzwilliam...Museum at Cambridge,... Anybody who saw and remembers his designs for the Nonesuch Edition of the Bible will recognise him as really one of the foremost designers of our time. ...'

Mona and Stephen Gooden were married in 1925, and we know this because of an auction item, the bookplate he designed for her to commemorate this occasion. Here is the design:





In 1946, a book was published, The poet's cat: an anthology. Mona Gooden is listed as the compiler. Her husband is mentioned with this credit: the frontispiece was engraved by Stephen Gooden.

And in 1960 a book of her own poetry was published. It is titled simply Poems. Mona Gooden is a good choice to celebrate our Poetry Month.