One of the most politically forthright women poets of the early twentieth century, Anna Wickham focused in her work on the difficulties of balancing the demands of marriage, motherhood, and a literary career. Writing in both free and rhymed verse, she published in a diverse range of places from Poetry: A Magazine of Verse to The Liberator. This variety, along with the fact that she remained unaligned with any poetic movement, has made her work difficult to frame critically. After committing suicide in 1947, Wickham was largely forgotten until a comprehensive collection of her poetry and prose appeared in 1984. Since then, there has been a resurgence of interest in her writing.

Wickham was born Edith Alice Mary Harper in Wimbledon in 1884; her exact date of birth is unknown. She was the only surviving child--a brother had been stillborn--of Geoffrey Harper, a piano repairman, and Alice Harper, née...