Sackville, Lady Margaret

(1881-1936)

   Although Lady Margaret Sackville was a popular and prolific writer during the first half of the twentieth century, details about her life are scant. She was the daughter of Reginald Windsor Sackville, 7th Earl De La Warr, and a protégée of Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (see entry). She is noted for her anti-war poems of World War I. Her work was collected in a slim volume of essays by her friend Georgina Somerville in Harp Aeolian: Commentaries on the Works of Lady Margaret Sackville (1953). Some say that she is no longer a popular poet because she was born either too early or too late, and that she was out of step with her age. She wrote fairy tales, dramas and short stories as well as poems. Some of her publications: A Hymn to Dionysus and Other Poems, 1905. Bertrud and Other Dramatic Poems, 1911. Selected Poems, 1919. 100 Little Poems, 1928. Collected Poems of Lady Margaret Sackville, 1939. Country Scenes and Country Verse, 1945. Quatrains and Other Poems, 1960. Some of her poems: "A Memory," "A Sermon," "An Apple," "Epitaph," "Resurrection."

   Sources: Biography of Lady Margaret Sackville. (http://www.bookrags.com/biography-lady-margaret-sackvilledlb/). Scars Upon My Heart: Women's Poetry and Verse of the First World War. Catherine W. Reilly, ed. Virago Press, 1981. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Home Book of Modern Verse. Burton Egbert Stevenson, ed. Henry Holt, 1953. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. Oxford University Press, 1971.