Background
Helen Archibald Clarke was born on November 13, 1860 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, the daughter of Flugh Archibald and Jane (Searle) Clarke. On her father’s side she was of Scotch ancestry; on her mother’s of English. Hugh Clarke, who was born in Hamilton, Ontario, was a music-teacher and later professor of harmony in the University of Pennsylvania; his father and grandfather had been musicians in Edinburgh. His wife was born in London and was brought when a child to Canada; she too had musical tastes.
Education
Helen was trained in music almost from babyhood and received a certificate for proficiency in that art from the University of Pennsylvania in 1883.
Career
Helen A. Clarke played and composed music her life long. The best known of her compositions is probably “The Hidden Dark. ” Music, however, was to be her avocation, editing and writing her main occupation. Deeply interested in poetry, she and her friend Charlotte Endymion Porter in 1888 launched a periodical called Poet Lore, which was to be “devoted to Shakespeare, Browning, and the Comparative Study of Literature. ” The coupling of the names of Shakespeare and Browning, and the broad program implicit in the third object of the magazine’s devotion, indicate the inclusive enthusiasms of its editors and the atmosphere of American Victorian culture in which Poet Lore was to flourish. It was started amid the benedictions of Walt Whitman, Edmund Clarence Stedman, Richard Hovey, and Bliss Carman, and, besides numerous articles on Shakespeare and Browning, delighted and thrilled its readers by printing translations of Maeterlinck, Strindberg, Gorky, D’Annunzio, Ibsen, and other European writers, who, at that time, were known only as names to most American readers.
Early in the nineties Miss Porter and Miss Clarke transferred their paper to Boston, where Dana Estes, the publisher, had offered them office room in exchange for three pages per issue of advertising space. There the two lived until Miss Clarke’s death, spending their summers regularly at Miss Porter’s estate on Isle au Haut, Maine, and giving themselves whole-heartedly to editing, writing, lecturing, and Browning. In 1896 they edited a two-volume edition of Browning's poems, in 1897 a volume of Clever Tales, translated from several languages, and an edition of The Ring and the Book, in 1898 an edition of Browning’s complete poetical works in twelve volumes, in 1900 a volume of Browning Study Programmes and an edition in six volumes of Mrs. Browning’s complete works, and in 1912 an edition of Shakespeare in twelve volumes. Miss Clarke also aided her friend with the first three volumes of a larger undertaking, the First Folio Shakespeare in forty volumes.
They sold Poet Lore in 1903 to Richard G. Badger, but continued to edit it for some time thereafter. Once her editorial responsibilities were over, Miss Clarke gave more time to writing. In 1915 appeared Balaustion’s Euripides, a dramatic version of “Balaustion’s Adventure” and “Aristophanes’ Apology. ”
Membership
Clarke was an honorary member of the Boston Browning Society and of the New York Browning Society.
