Patmore

Through letters, diaries and photographs, Arrington explores the creative and political lives of Ezra and Dorothy Pound, W. B. and George Yeats, Richard Aldington and Brigit Patmore, and other poets living in Italy during Mussolini’s regime.

It’s a short leap between Patmore’s “lack of lovely pride, in her/ Who strives to please” and the piece of screenwriting shorthand that’s so common it’s become a cliche: “Enter Jane — hot but doesn’t know it.”

She gave that self-sabotaging narrative a name: “The Angel in the House,” inspired by Coventry Patmore’s 1854 poem extolling the prim virtues of Victorian domesticity.

“There was lobbying to keep thebaine out of the 80/20 rule,” said Peter Patmore, the attorney general for the state of Tasmania at the time, who led government efforts and noted the role of Glaxo and Tasmanian Alkaloids.

Are she and Mrs. Patmore subject to a kitchen-specific time warp?