| Intro | Welsh poet who wrote in English |
| Was |
Poet Writer |
| From | United Kingdom |
| Type | Literature |
| Gender | female |
| Birth | 26 November 1827, Montgomeryshire |
| Death |
23 January 1890, London Borough of Wandsworth (aged 62 years) |
Emily Jane Pfeiffer, née Davis, (26 November 1827 – 23 January 1890) was an English poet, and philanthropist.
Life
Following the financial collapse of her grandfather’s bank in 1831, her family lacked the resources to send her to school, but her father, Thomas Richard Davis, encouraged her to paint and write poetry. In 1842, Pfeiffer published her first book, The holly branch, an album for 1843. In 1850, she married Jurgen Edward Pfeiffer, a tea merchant. Pfeiffer was a prolific writer, publishing several books and compilations of poems. Her 1876 collection, Poems, was a critical success; Flowers of the night, a collection of sonnets published in 1889, after the death of her husband, dealt with themes of grief and consolation as well as the disadvantageous legal position of women.
After reading Charles Darwin’s Descent of Man (1871), Pfeiffer wrote to Darwin to question his description of sexual selection; she took issue with the idea that birds had sufficient aesthetic sophistication to select their partners based on beauty. Instead, Pfeiffer thought it plausible that birds selected partners that they found aesthetically fascinating or alluring. Darwin agreed that Pfeiffer’s use of the term “fascination” was appropriate to describe the mechanism by which sexual selection functioned.
Pfeiffer left some of her property to her niece and sisters, but the bulk of it, in accordance with the wishes of her husband, who had left her all his wealth, went to promote women’s education, and establish an orphanage for girls. The orphanage had already been built on their property at her death, but following a lawsuit against the estate, the property was broken up and sold in 1892, including “the Orphanage … a brick-built cottage”.
Of the main bequest, £2000 was used to support the construction of Aberdare Hall, now part of Cardiff University.