Robin Hyde
Encyclopedia
Cape Town
Cape Town is the second-most populous city in South Africa, and the provincial capital and primate city of the Western Cape. As the seat of the National Parliament, it is also the legislative capital of the country. It forms part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality...
, South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
and taken to Wellington
Wellington
Wellington is the capital city and third most populous urban area of New Zealand, although it is likely to have surpassed Christchurch due to the exodus following the Canterbury Earthquake. It is at the southwestern tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Rimutaka Range...
, New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
before her first birthday. She had her secondary education at Wellington Girls' College where she wrote poetry and short stories for the school magazine. After school she briefly attended Victoria University of Wellington
Victoria University of Wellington
Victoria University of Wellington was established in 1897 by Act of Parliament, and was a former constituent college of the University of New Zealand. It is particularly well known for its programmes in law, the humanities, and some scientific disciplines, but offers a broad range of other courses...
. When she was 18, Hyde suffered a knee injury which required a hospital operation. Lameness and pain haunted her for the rest of her life. In 1925 she became a journalist for Wellington's Dominion
The Dominion Post (Wellington)
The Dominion Post is a metropolitan broadsheet newspaper published in Wellington, New Zealand, owned by the Australian Fairfax group, owners of The Age, Melbourne, and The Sydney Morning Herald.- Foundation :...
newspaper, mostly writing for the women's pages. She continued to support herself through journalism throughout her life.
While working at the Dominion, she had a brief love affair with Harry Sweetman, during which she fell pregnant. Sweetman left her to travel to England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, dying soon after his arrival. Hyde resigned from the Dominion in April 1926 and moved to 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...
, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
. It was there that she lost her unborn son, Robin, whose name she took as her pseudonym. The trauma of losing both her lover and her child led to Hyde being hospitalised at Queen Mary Hospital in Hanmer Springs
Hanmer Springs
Hanmer Springs is a small town in the Canterbury region of the South Island of New Zealand. It is located 65 kilometres southwest of Kaikoura , in the Hurunui District. The town lies on a minor road 9 kilometres north of State Highway 7, the northern route between Christchurch and the West Coast...
, back in New Zealand. After a period of recovery, she began to write again, publishing poetry in several New Zealand newspapers in 1927. She was also engaged to write columns for the Christchurch Sun, and the Mirror. However, she became frustrated at the lack of creative input, as the papers merely wanted a social column. Social columns or women's pages were the main outlet available to women journalists during the period. These experiences contributed to her treatise on journalism in New Zealand, Journalese, published in 1934.
In 1929 Hyde published her first book of poetry, The Desolate Star. Between 1935 and 1938 she published five novels: Passport to Hell (1936), Check To Your King (1936), Wednesday's Children (1937), Nor the Years Condemn (1938), and The Godwits Fly (1938).
In early 1938 she left New Zealand and travelled to Hong Kong, arriving in early February. At the time, much of eastern China was under Japanese occupation, after the 1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria. Hyde was meant to travel to Kobe
Kobe
, pronounced , is the fifth-largest city in Japan and is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture on the southern side of the main island of Honshū, approximately west of Osaka...
then Vladivostok
Vladivostok
The city is located in the southern extremity of Muravyov-Amursky Peninsula, which is about 30 km long and approximately 12 km wide.The highest point is Mount Kholodilnik, the height of which is 257 m...
to take the trans-Siberian railway
Trans-Siberian Railway
The Trans-Siberian Railway is a network of railways connecting Moscow with the Russian Far East and the Sea of Japan. It is the longest railway in the world...
to Europe. When the connection was delayed she made her way to Japanese-occupied Shanghai, where she met fellow New Zealander Rewi Alley
Rewi Alley
Rewi Alley, 路易•艾黎, Lùyì Àilí, QSO, , was a New Zealand-born writer, educator, social reformer, potter, and member of the Communist Party of China....
. Various peregrinations through China followed, including Canton and Hankow, the latter of which was the centre of Chinese resistance to Japanese occupation. She moved north to visit the battlefront and was in Hsuchow when Japanese forces took the city on the 19th of May.
Hyde attempted to flee the area by walking along the railway lines and was eventually escorted by Japanese officials to the port city of Tsing Tao where she was handed over to British authorities. Shortly after she resumed her journey to England via sea, arriving in Southampton 18 September, 1938.
Robin Hyde died by her own hand in England in 1939 and is buried in Kensington New Cemetery, Gunnersbury
Gunnersbury
Gunnersbury is a place in the London Borough of Hounslow, with its northern edge in the London Borough of Ealing, west London. It has an area of less than half a square kilometre and is within the west area of the Chiswick W4 postal district of London....
. She is survived by a son, Derek Challis.