Anna Wickham (1883–1947)

Anna Wickham was the pen name of Edith Alice Mary Harper. She was born in London and brought up in Australia by parents said to be "unconventional." In 1904, she returned to England, where she took acting and singing lessons. Two years later, she married Patrick Hepburn, a British lawyer, with whom she had four sons. She began writing poetry during her marriage and in 1911 published her first book, Songs by John Oland. She spent some time in a mental hospital during this year. She went on to publish other volumes of poetry, including The Contemplative Quarry (1915), The Man with a Hammer (1916), The Little Old House (1921), and Thirty-Six Poems (1926). After World War I, Anna Wickham lived in Paris, where she befriended many avant-garde literary figures including D.H. Lawrence, David Garnett, H.D., and Natalie Clifford Barney. During the 1930s, she hosted literary gatherings at her home in London. At her death by suicide in 1947, she left behind thousands of unpublished poems, some of which appeared in Selected Poems (1971). She is remembered today as a modernist poet and feminist writer.