Anna Wickham
Anna Wickham, born Edith Alice Mary Harper, was a poet whose life journey spanned continents and artistic pursuits. After promising her father in Australia at a young age to become a poet, she initially explored a career in music and acting in London and Paris. However, her life took a domestic turn when she married Patrick Hepburn and became a mother to four sons. Despite her commitment to family, Wickham faced significant challenges in her marriage, particularly due to her passion for writing. After a brief recovery from exhaustion in 1911, she began to publish poetry that often reflected her struggles with marital discontent. The death of her young son in 1921 prompted her to flee to France, and her eventual separation from Hepburn in 1926 marked a pivotal shift in her life. Wickham's later years saw her embracing feminist ideals and forming a relationship with American poet Natalie Barney. Tragically, her life ended in 1947, but she left a lasting legacy through her poetry, much of which was published posthumously, reigniting interest in her contributions to feminist literature.
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Anna Wickham
Poet
- Born: 1884
- Birthplace: Wimbledon, England
- Died: April 30, 1947
Biography
Edith Alice Mary Harper, shuttled as a child between England and Australia, named herself Anna Wickham after the Brisbane, Australia, locale where, at the age of ten, she promised her father she would become a poet. First, however, she attended acting school in London and enjoyed a career as a professional singer in Paris. She left her musical career behind when, at the age of twenty-two, she married the thirty-two-year-old London solicitor, Patrick Hepburn. Wickham them threw herself into motherhood, giving birth to four sons and becoming an instructor at a school that trained women for motherhood. Despite her domesticity, however, Wickham’s marriage was not a good one. Wickham’s and Hepburn’s differences were made more pronounced by their struggle over her desire to write.
In 1911, upon her release from a sanitarium where she had recovered from exhaustion, Wickham carried through with her goal of publishing her poetry. The genius of her work, much of which dealt with the misery of marriage, was recognized almost immediately, increasing Hepburn’s jealousy. When, in 1921,Wickham’s four-year-old son died of scarlet fever, she took her other children with her when she fled to France. When she finally returned to London, Wickham was “determined to become a model housewife,” but in 1926, she and Hepburn separated. Two years later they reconciled, but their relations were strained by Hepburn’s financial mismanagement. Then, on Christmas Day, 1929, Hepburn fell from a mountainside while walking in the Lake District and died of exposure.
Wickham then began a passionate relationship with the American poet Natalie Barney and publicly declared her feminism in 1938 by drawing up a manifesto called “The League for the Protection of the Imagination of Women.” Wickham spent the war years in London, refusing to leave her home despite firebombings. However, in the gray aftermath of World War II, suffering from depression and a sense that her sons no longer needed her, Wickham hanged herself, leaving behind a poem instead of a suicide note. She also left behind more than a thousand unpublished poems, some of which appeared in the 1984 collection The Writings of Anna Wickham: Free Woman and Poet, which brought renewed interest to this seminal feminist poet.