Anna Wickham

Anna Wickhm (1883-1947). Courtesy Women Poets.

Anna Wickham (May 7, 1883 - April 30, 1947) was the pen name of Edith Alice Mary Harper, an English poet with strong Australian connections. 

Life

Youth and education

Edith Harper was born in Wimbledon, London.

She was brought up in Australia in a rather disordered existence, mostly in Brisbane and Sydney. Her pen-names imply an Australian self-identification: 'Wickham' was taken from a Brisbane street; it followed her use of John Oland, which alludes to the Jenolan Caves in New South Wales, for her debut collection.

She returned to London in 1904, where she took singing lessons and had a drama scholarship (at the future RADA, just founded). She pursued her singing in Paris in 1905 with Polish tenor Jean de Reszke.

Marriage

In 1906 she married Patrick Hepburn, a London solicitor with interests in Romanesque architecture, and later astronomy. They had 4 sons, but the marriage had constant difficulties. They lived initially in central London, then in family houses in Hampstead: Downshire Hill from 1909, and then from 1919 a house on Parliament Hill which would be her permanent home.

She invested a great deal in motherhood for her 2 eldest children, and also became involved in the contemporary philanthropic movement concerned with maternal care, at St Pancras Hospital. She was in a private mental hospital in 1911 for a period of about 6 weeks, after a voyage to see her father in Ceylon, and a visit from her mother (both parents were still resident in Australia).

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.

Career

Her debut collection, Songs (published as by "John Oland") was published in 1911. Around then, or shortly after, she met Harold Monro at his Poetry Bookshop. He encouraged her, and she published a 2nd collection in 1915. This was the effective start of 30 years in which she mixed with literati in London (and later Paris). She carried on a bohemian, later Fitzrovian existence socially, in parallel with a home life.

During World War I Patrick Hepburn spent time away from home, joining the RNAS. Anna struck up an acquaintance at this time with Frieda and D.H. Lawrence. She also knew H.D., with whom she'd had a brief bisexual affairTemplate:Fact, although that was one of several contacts which apparently failed in sympathy.

Her 3rd son Richard died of scarlet fever, aged 4. 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, 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-marriedCaitlin and Dylan Thomas, and then quarrelled with them.

Writing

Critical reputation

Wickham is remembered as a modernist figure and feminist writer, though a writer 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.

Publications

Poetry

• Songs (as "John Oland"). London: Women's Printing Society, 1911.
• The Contemplative Quarry. London: Poetry Bookshop, 1915.
• The Man With A Hammer: Verses. London: Grant Richards, 1916.
• The Contemplative Quarry / The Man With a Hammer (with introduction by Louis Untermeyer). New York: Harcourt Brace, 1921.
• The Little Old House. London: Poetry Bookshop, 1921.
• The Tired Man: Poem. London: Poetry Bookshop, [1936?]
• Anna Wickham. London: Grant Richards (Shilling Selections from Edwardian Poets), 1936.
• Selected Poems (with introduction by David Garnett). London: Chatto & Windus, 1971.
• Poems (edited by Helena Nelson). Warwick, UK: Greville Press, 2007.

Collected editions

• The Writings of Anna Wickham: Free woman and poet (edited by R.D. Smith; preface by James Hepburn). London: Virago, 1984.

The Silence, by Anna Wickham

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy the National Library of Australia.

See also

• List of British poets

References

• A New Matrix for Modernism: A Study of the Lives and Poetry of Charlotte Mew and Anna Wickham (2002) Nelljean McConeghey Rice
• Anna Wickham: A Poet's Daring Life (2003) Jennifer Vaughan Jones

External links

Poems

• "Divorce"
• "Meditation at Kew"
• Anna Wickham in Modern British Poetry: "The Singer," "Reality," "Song"
• Anna Wickham 1883-1947 at the Poetry Foundation
• Wickham in Poetry: A magazine of verse, 1912-1922: "My Lady Surrenders," "The Silence," "Sentiments," "Completion," "After Annunciation," "King Alfred and the Peasant Woman," "A Poet Advises a Change of Clothes"
• Anna Wickham at PoemHunter ("The Cherry Blossom Wand," "The Fired Pot," "Paradox")
• Anna Wickham at Amazon.com

About

• Wickham, Anna at AustLit
• From Anna Wickham's Songs of John Oland
• "Anna Wickham's The Contemplative Quarry, XII