Nora Chesson (1871-1906), from The Academy and Literature (5 December 1903). Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
Nora Jane Hopper Chesson (2 January 1871 - 14 April 1906) was an English poet.
Life[]
Youth and education[]
Chesson was born Eleanor Hopper 2 January 1871 at 8 Radnor Place, St Leonards, Devon, the daughter of Captain Harman Baillie Hopper, an Irish officer retired from the 31st Bengal native infantry, and Caroline Augusta Francis, who was Welsh. In 1871 Captain Hopper died, and Nora and her mother moved to London, where they lived in Kensington before settling in Notting Hill.[1]
Nora was educated at Cumberland House, South Kensington, where she was instructed primarily in painting. She began writing poetry at an early age, and in 1887 her earliest published poem appeared in the Family Herald.[1]
Career[]
Chesson subsequently became a prolific contributor of poems and stories to a variety of journals, among them the National Observer, Pilot, and the Yellow Book. With the publication of her volume of stories and poems Ballads in prose (1894) she attracted the attention of W.B. Yeats, who described it as possessing ‘the beauty of a dim twilight’ (Bookman).[1]
She read at ‘original nights’ of the Irish Literary Society in London, and was reported to possess ‘an exquisitely modulated voice’ (MacManus, 5).[1]
On 5 March 1901 she married writer (Wilfrid) Hugh Chesson, and they settled at Childwall, 337 Sandycombe Road, North Sheen, Surrey. They had 3 children: Ann Caroline Spry (b. 1902), Dermot (b. 1904), and Dagmar (b. 1906).[1]
Chesson maintained a prodigious literary output, continuing to publish verse in the collections Aquamarines (1902) and Dirge for Aoine and other poems (1906), but also contributing poems and reviews to periodicals including Folklore, the Celt, and New Ireland Review and writing children's fiction for the Girls’ Own Paper and Atalanta.[1]
She was assisted by George Moore (qv) in the writing of a libretto for O'Brien Butler's opera Murgheis (The sea swan), based on Irish mythology, which was performed in the Theatre Royal in Dublin in December 1903.[1]
Around 1904–5 her husband suffered a nervous breakdown, and it seems that financial necessity forced her to turn her hand to novel-writing: The bell and the arrow, a love story set in an English village, appeared in 1905. In this year, supported by G. K. Chesterton and E. V. Lucas, Chesson made a successful application to the Royal Literary Fund, on the proceeds of which she paid a brief visit to Ireland in September 1905.[1]
She returned to Surrey where, soon after the birth of her second daughter, she died 14 April 1906 of puerperal fever.[1]
Writing[]
Her work was in the style of the emerging Celtic twilight manner, though it seems she never lived in Ireland.[1] Praised by Yeats for her early poems and tales, she incorporated Irish fairylore into her works. Ballads in Prose (1894) and Under Quicken Boughs (1896) contain a number of elegiac farewells to members of various fairy tribes. Significant works include the poems ‘The Wind among the Reeds’, ‘The Fiddler’, and ‘The Lament of the Last Leprechan’ as well as the prose tale ‘Daluan’.[2]
Though Yeats initially praised Ballads and Poems and supported her work, he was also conscious that her writing bore marked similarities to his own and that of Katharine Tynan. Regarding her poetry as ‘plagiarisms of inexperienced enthusiasm’, he commented in a letter to his sister Lily Yeats that the volume ‘can only be of help to foster a taste for our Celtic wares’.[1]
Her collection Under Quicken Boughs (1896) again demonstrated a Celtic revival influence, but also showed classical inspiration.[1]
Publications[]
Poetry[]
- Under Quicken Boughs (as "Nora Hopper"). London: John Lane / New York: G. Richmond, 1896.
- Songs of the Morning. London: Grant Richards, 1900.
- Aquamarines. London: Grant Richards, 1902.
- A Dead Girl to Her Lover, and other poems. London: Alston Rivers, 1906.
- Dirge for Aoine, and other poems (edited by W.H. Chesson). London: Alston Rivers, 1906.
Novels[]
- The Bell and the Arrow: An English love story. London: T. Werner Laurie, 1905.
- Father Felix's Chronicles (edited by W.H. Chesson). London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1907.
Short fiction[]
- Ballads in Prose (as "Nora Hopper"). London: John Lane / Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1894.
Juvenile[]
- Mildred and Her Mills, and other poems. London: Raphael Tuck, 1903.
- Little Sunbeams. London & New York: R. Tuck, [190?]
- Tales from Tennyson (illustrated by Frances Brundage & M. Bowley). London: Raphael Tuck, [1904?]
- also published as Children's Stories from Tennyson (illustrated by John H. Bacon, Arthur Dixon, et al; edited by Eric Vriedenburg). London: Raphael Tuck, 1914.
Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.[3]
See also[]
References[]
- Frances Clarke, "Chesson, Eleanor (‘Nora’)," Dictionary of Irish Biography, October 2009. Web, Mar. 12, 2023.
Notes[]
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 Clarke (2009)
- ↑ Carole Silver, Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales (Oxford University Press, 2000), Answers.com. Web, Mar. 13, 2020.
- ↑ Search results = au:Nora Hopper Chesson, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, May 31, 2014.
External links[]
- Poems
- "March"
- "Hertha"
- "Geisha Song"
- Nora Jane Hopper Chesson at AllPoetry (35 poems)
- Nora Jane Hopper Chesson at PoemHunter (36 poems)
- Books
- Nora Chesson at the Online Books Page
- Nora Chesson at Amazon.com
- Works by or about Nora Chesson in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
- About
- Nora Jane Hopper in the Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales
This article incorporates text from the Dictionary of Irish Biography, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International license. Original article is at: Chesson, Eleanor (‘Nora’)
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