Anna Wickham http://www.laurencemillergallery.com/images/abbott11.jpg was the pseudonym

Pseudonym

A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...

 of Edith Alice Mary Harper (1884 -1947), a British poet with strong Australian connections. She is remembered as a modernist figure and feminist writer, though one not able to command sustained critical attention in her lifetime. Many treated her as an eccentric, on the basis of a disorganised lifestyle in later years, while she had a number of very good and notable literary friends.

Early life

She was born in Wimbledon, London

Wimbledon, London

Wimbledon is a district in the south west area of London, England, located south of Wandsworth, and east of Kingston upon Thames. It is situated within Greater London. It is home to the Wimbledon Tennis Championships and New Wimbledon Theatre, and contains Wimbledon Common, one of the largest areas...

, and brought up in Australia in a rather disordered existence, mostly in Brisbane

Brisbane

Brisbane is the capital and most populous city in the Australian state of Queensland and the third most populous city in Australia. Brisbane's metropolitan area has a population of over 2 million, and the South East Queensland urban conurbation, centred around Brisbane, encompasses a population of...

 and Sydney

Sydney

Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...

. Her pen-names imply an Australian self-identification: 'Wickham' was after a Brisbane street; it followed her use of John Oland for her first collection, which alludes to the Jenolan Caves

Jenolan Caves

The Jenolan Caves are caves in the Blue Mountains, New South Wales, Australia; 175 kilometres west of Sydney. They are the most celebrated of several similar groups in the limestone of the country being the oldest discovered open caves in the world...

 in New South Wales

New South Wales

New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...

.

She returned to London in 1904, where she took singing lessons and had a drama scholarship (at the future RADA

Rada

Rada is the term for "council" or "assembly"borrowed by Polish from the Low Franconian "Rad" and later passed into the Czech, Ukrainian, and Belarusian languages....

, just founded). She pursued her singing in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 in 1905 with Jean de Reszke

Jean de Reszke

Jean de Reszke, born Jan Mieczyslaw, , was a Polish tenor. Renowned internationally for the high quality of his singing and the elegance of his bearing, he became the biggest male opera star of the late 19th century....

, the Polish tenor.

In 1906 she married Patrick Hepburn, a London solicitor

Solicitor

Solicitors are lawyers who traditionally deal with any legal matter including conducting proceedings in courts. In the United Kingdom, a few Australian states and the Republic of Ireland, the legal profession is split between solicitors and barristers , and a lawyer will usually only hold one title...

 with interests in Romanesque architecture

Romanesque architecture

Romanesque architecture is an architectural style of Medieval Europe characterised by semi-circular arches. There is no consensus for the beginning date of the Romanesque architecture, with proposals ranging from the 6th to the 10th century. It developed in the 12th century into the Gothic style,...

, and later astronomy

Astronomy

Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth...

. They had four sons, but the marriage had constant difficulties. They lived first in central London, then in family houses in Hampstead

Hampstead

Hampstead is an area of London, England, north-west of Charing Cross. Part of the London Borough of Camden in Inner London, it is known for its intellectual, liberal, artistic, musical and literary associations and for Hampstead Heath, a large, hilly expanse of parkland...

: Downshire Hill from 1909, and then from 1919 a house on Parliament Hill

Parliament Hill

Parliament Hill , colloquially known as The Hill, is an area of Crown land on the southern banks of the Ottawa River in downtown Ottawa, Ontario. Its Gothic revival suite of buildingsthe parliament buildings serves as the home of the Parliament of Canada and contains a number of architectural...

 which would be her permanent home.

She invested a great deal in motherhood for her first two children, and also became involved in the contemporary philanthropic movement concerned with maternal care, at St Pancras Hospital

St Pancras Hospital

St Pancras Hospital is a public hospital in the St Pancras/Somers Town area of London, near Camden Town. The hospital is controlled by the Camden Primary Care Trust and specialises in geriatric and psychiatric medicine....

. She was in a private mental hospital in 1911 for a period of about six weeks, after a voyage to see her father in Ceylon, and a visit from her mother (both parents were still resident in Australia).

Career and strifes

In her autobiographical writing she represented this occurrence as related to her husband's hostility to her writing of poetry. It followed a violent quarrel. Given the complexities of her emotional life at the time, post-natal (with two miscarriages) and in relation to parental conflicts, there is reasonable doubt whether that was the single factor.

Her first collection, Songs by John Oland was published in 1911. Around then, or shortly after, she met Harold Monro

Harold Monro

Harold Edward Monro was a British poet, the proprietor of the Poetry Bookshop in London which helped many famous poets bring their work before the public....

 at his Poetry Bookshop

Poetry Bookshop

The Poetry Bookshop operated at 35 Devonshire Street in the Bloomsbury district of central London, from 1913 to 1926. It was the brainchild of Harold Monro, and was supported by his moderate income....

. He encouraged her, and she published a second collection in 1915. This was the effective start of thirty years in which she mixed with literati in London (and later Paris). She carried on a bohemian

Bohemianism

Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...

, later Fitzrovian existence socially, in parallel with a home life.

During World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 Patrick Hepburn spent time away from home, joining the RNAS. Anna struck up an acquaintance at this time with D. H. Lawrence

D. H. Lawrence

David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...

 and Frieda. She also knew H. D., with whom she'd had a brief bisexual affair, although that was one of several contacts which apparently failed in sympathy.

Her third son Richard died of scarlet fever

Scarlet fever

Scarlet fever is a disease caused by exotoxin released by Streptococcus pyogenes. Once a major cause of death, it is now effectively treated with antibiotics...

 aged four. She spent a period in 1921/1922 in Paris, after his death, to recuperate. There she developed a passion for Natalie Barney. It was not returned in the same way, but they sustained a correspondence (later published as Postcards and Poems). She met some leading Paris figures in anglophone modernism of the time.

Her marriage was in crisis in 1926, and she separated from Patrick until 1928. He died in an accident on holiday, in 1929.

During the 1930s she was well known in literary London, and wrote a great deal of poetry (much of which was later lost in war damage); but found it harder to get published. She did have support from the somewhat louche quarter of John Gawsworth

John Gawsworth

John Gawsworth , a pseudonym of Terence Ian Fytton Armstrong , was a British writer, poet and compiler of anthologies, both of poetry and of short stories. He also used the pseudonym Orpheus Scrannel...

, who put out a Richards Press collection of her work in 1936. An extended autobiographical essay Prelude to a Spring Clean dates from 1935. That was the year in which she supported the just-married Dylan Thomas

Dylan Thomas

Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer, Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 11 January 2008. who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself...

 and Caitlin, and then quarrelled with them.

Her death was by suicide

Suicide

Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...

in the very hard winter of 1947, foreshadowed a dozen years before in her writing.

Works

• Songs of John Oland (1911)
• The Contemplative Quarry (1915)
• The Man With A Hammer (1916)
• The Little Old House 1921
• Anna Wickham: Richards' Shilling Selections from Edwardian Poets (1936, Richards Press)
• Selected Poems (1971)
• The Writings of Anna Wickham: Free Woman & Poet (1984) edited by R.D. Smith, includes Prelude to a Spring Clean