Wickham, Anna

(1884-1947)

   Edith Alice Mary Harper was born in Wimbledon, London, and brought up mostly in Brisbane and Sydney, Australia. Her pen name "Wickham" was after a Brisbane street; and "John Oland" (for her first collection) alludes to the Jenolan Caves in New South Wales. She returned to London in 1904 to study singing at what is now the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, then was coached in Paris by Jean de Reszke, the Polish tenor. In 1906 she married Patrick Hepburn, a London solicitor and astronomer; he died in 1929. She wrote prolifically and her poetry was more popular in America and France than in Britain. Her poems reflect her struggle to combine being an artist with wife and mother. Some of her publications: Songs of John Oland, 1911. The Contemplative Quarry, 1915. The Man with a Hammer, 1916. The Little Old House, 1921. Thirty-six New Poems, 1936. Selected Poems, 1971. Some of her poems: "Abdication," "Divorce," "King Alfred and the Peasant Woman," "Meditation at Kew," "Reality," "Ship near Shoals," "The Affinity," "The Contemplative Quarry," "The Singer."

   Sources: Biography of Anna Wickham (http://www.madpoetry.org/wickham.html). 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 Contemplative Quarry and the Man with a Hammer by Anna Wickham. Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1921. The Home Book of Modern Verse. Burton Egbert Stevenson, ed. Henry Holt, 1953. The Norton Antholog y of Literature by Women: The Tradition in English. Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Guber, eds. W.W. Norton, 1985. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. The Writings of Anna Wickham: Free Woman and Poet. Virago Press Ltd., 1984. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia). Women's Poetry of the 1930s: A Critical Antholog y. Jane Dowson, ed. Routledge, 1966.