MATHILDE

BLIND (1841—1896)  , English author, was born at Mannheim on the 21st of March 1841 . Her father was a banker named Cohen, but she took the name of Blind after her step-father, the political writer, Karl Blind (1826—1907), one of the exiled leaders of the Baden insurrection in 1848—1849, and an ardent supporter of the various 19th-century movements for the freedom and autonomy of struggling nationalities . The family was compelled to take refuge in England, where Mathilde devoted herself to literature and to the higher education of women . She produced also three long poems, " The Prophecy of St Oran " (1881), " The Heather on Fire" . (1886), an indignant protest against the evictions in the Highlands, and " The Ascent of Man " (1888), which was to be the epic of the theory of evolution . She wrote biographies of George Eliot (1883) and Madame Roland (1886), and translated D.F . Strauss's The Old Faith and the New' (1873—1874) and the Memoirs of Marie Bashkirtseff (1890) . She died on the 26th of Nov-ember 1896, bequeathing her property to Newnham College, Cambridge . A complete edition of her poems was edited by Mr Arthur Symons in 1900, with a biographical introduction by Dr Richard Garnett .