With grateful thanks to Dawn Dyer of Bristol Reference Library, I can now reveal the names of a few more poets to add to my ever-growing list -
Emily Caroline Kington Blair-Oliphant or Ardblair Castle, Blairgrowie whose collection of poems entitled "Chrysoprase" was published in 1916 and sold in aid of the Prince of Wales's Fund.**
Miss M.L. Notts of Clifton Down who collected together a 'booklet of prose and verse' with the help of Sir Henry Newbolt, Rudyard Kipling, Harold Begbie and others and added poems written by herself and by her sister Miss J.P. Nott - sold for the sum of sixpence in aid of sick and wounded horses.
Margaret Hobhouse, whose son Stephen published some of her writing in 1934 under the title "Margaret Hobhouse and her Family" (Stanhope Press, Rochester)
Helen Lanyon - whose poems were published in "The Englishwoman" and
Grace James - whose poem "Barnaby Bright" was published in "The Englishwoman" April - June 1916.
As always I will do my best to find out more about these women and report back to you.
** The Prince of Wales Fund was set up following an appeal made by the Prince of Wales which was published in "The Times" newspaper of 7th August 1914. This was to be a National Fund for War Relief. £250,000 was collected by midnight and in the first week £1 million was raised. Even by today's standards those are decent sums but don't forget that average weekly wages back then were
counted in shillings not pounds...
