Marjorie Pickthall
Marjorie Pickthall was a Canadian poet and novelist born on September 14, 1883, in Gunnersby, England. Following her family’s immigration to Toronto, Canada, she developed a passion for nature and began writing poetry and stories at a young age, selling her first story at just fifteen. Pickthall's literary career flourished in the early 20th century, with her first poetry collection, *The Drift of Pinions*, published in 1913, earning her acclaim as one of Canada's finest poets. Her work often reflected a romantic style reminiscent of the Pre-Raphaelite movement and was characterized by themes of melancholy and spirituality, particularly within the framework of Anglo-Catholicism.
Throughout her life, she published numerous short stories and novels, though not all were commercially successful. During World War I, she contributed as an ambulance driver and farm laborer, highlighting her resilience and commitment. After returning to Canada in 1920, she settled on Vancouver Island, where she continued her writing until her death in 1922. While her prominence faded in the years following her death, feminist critics in the late 20th century began to revisit her work, recognizing her insights into gender challenges and her contributions to Canadian literature.
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Marjorie Pickthall
Writer
- Born: September 14, 1883
- Birthplace: Gunnersbury, England
- Died: April 19, 1922
- Place of death: Canada
Biography
Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall was born in Gunnersby, Middlesex, England, on September 14, 1883, the daughter of Arthur C. Pickthall and Lizzie Helen Mary Mallard Pickthall. Soon after her birth, her parents moved to Southwater, Sussex, England, where she learned to love nature. When she was six, her parents immigrated to Toronto, Canada. Because of her delicate health, Pickthall spent much of her time indoors, reading and writing poetry. She had already decided to become a writer.
Pickthall was educated at St. Mildred’s Girls School and the Bishop Strachan School for Girls. During her school years, she began submitting stories and poems to various newspapers. When she was fifteen, she sold her story “Two Ears” to the Toronto Globe. Her short fiction and poems were soon appearing regularly in publications like Century and Harper’s. Between 1905 and 1908, three novels of adventure that Pickthall wrote to appeal to boys were published as magazine serials and then in book form.
After her mother’s death in 1910, Pickthall sought solace by obtaining a job in the library at Victoria College, Toronto, but in 1912 she returned to England, where she had close friends. In 1913 her first collection of poetry, The Drift of Pinions, was published. It sold out almost immediately. With the appearance three years later of a revised and enlarged edition, many began calling Pickthall the finest poet Canada had produced. Conservative critics admired her for rejecting modernism and instead writing poems that recalled the dreamy romanticism of the earlier Pre-Raphaelite school of poetry. Pickthall also shared their love of liturgy, though her religious inclination was not toward Rome, as some critics mistakenly suggested, but toward Anglo-Catholicism.
While she was in England, Pickthall completed The Woodcarver’s Wife, and Later Poems, which contained the verse drama mentioned in the title. She also wrote Little Hearts, a historical novel about eighteenth century Devonshire, and The Bridge, set in the area of the Great Lakes. Both relied heavily on melodrama, and neither was a success. During her lifetime, Pickthall also published two hundred short stories. A collection of her stories appeared posthumously, as did her Complete Poems.
During World War I, Pickthall worked as an ambulance driver and a farm laborer, then became assistantlibrarian at the South Kensington Meteorological Office in London. In May, 1920, she returned to Canada and settled down in a cottage on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. She died of an embolism on April 19, 1922, and was buried beside her mother in St. James Cemetery in Toronto.
In 1899, Pickthall was awarded the first prize for poetry and the short story in a competition for Canadian youth. She also won a national poetry competition in 1900. As a writer who clung to the Romantic tradition after it had given way to modernism, whose poetry was suffused with vague melancholy and whose prose was unrealistic, Pickthall soon lost both her standing in Canadian letters and her readership. However, in the late twentieth century feminist critics began re-examining her career, her fiction, and her verse drama The Woodcarver’s Wife. In all of them they found evidence that the once-celebrated Pickthall was well aware of the difficulties her gender had always encountered, whether they chose to lead ordinary lives or, like her, aspired to lasting fame.