May Wedderburn Cannan

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May Wedderburn Cannan (born October 14, 1893 in Oxford , † December 11, 1973 in Pangbourne ) was a British poet and author who was mainly active during the First World War .

Life

Early life

May Wedderburn Cannan was born on October 14, 1893, the second daughter of the Dean of Trinity College, Oxford and Head of Oxford University Press , Charles Cannan and his wife, Mary Wedderburn. She and her two sisters were educated in a small school in Oxford and later in Downe House School. Her first poem was published in The Scotsman in 1908 .

In 1911, at 18, she volunteered for the Voluntary Aid Detachment, where she was trained as a nurse. In 1913 she was ordered to set up her own hospital with 60 beds. However, this was dropped after the beginning of World War I, and Cannan was placed under an officer.

First World War and the interwar period

In the spring of 1915 she was transferred to Rouen , a Norman port city behind the front . This served as the basis for her poem Rouen . After a month she returned to Oxford, where she and her sisters helped Oxford University Press, which had lost most of its workers due to the war.

In the summer of 1918 she worked for MI5 in France . In December she met Bevil Quiller-Couch, the son of Arthur Quiller-Couch . They got engaged, but never got married because Bevil Quiller-Couch died of Spanish flu in February 1919 . She married Percival J. Slater in 1924, with whom she moved to Staffordshire and had a son. In Staffordshire she worked on the partly fictional autobiography The Lonely Generation , published in 1934. Then she withdrew from the public.

death

She died of a heart attack on December 11, 1973 in Pangbourne .

bibliography

Books (selection)
  • In War Time (poetry collection), Oxford, Blackwell 1917
  • The Splendid Days (poetry collection), Oxford, Blackwell, 1919
  • The House of Hope (poetry collection), London, Milford, 1923
  • The Lonely Generation , London, Hutchinson, 1934
  • Gray Ghosts and Voices , 1976, Roundwood Press, ISBN 0-900093-50-1 (posthumous)
  • The Tears of War: The Love Story of a Young Poet and a War Hero , 2000, Cavalier Books ISBN 1-899470-18-2 (posthumous)
Poems (selection)
  • After the war
  • August 1914
  • Rouen
  • The Armistice

literature

  • May Wedderburn Cannan: The Lonely Generation , 1934
  • May Wedderburn Cannan: Gray Ghosts and Voices , 1976
  • Sharon Ouditt: Fighting Forces, Writing Women: Identity and Ideology in the First World War. , Routledge, 1994.

Individual evidence

  1. a b c May Wedderburn Cannan. Spartacus Educational, accessed May 12, 2020 .
  2. Jane Potter: Cannan [married name Slater], May Wedderburn locked. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , accessed May 12, 2020 .
  3. a b c d May Wedderburn Cannan. Scottish Poetry Library, accessed May 13, 2020 .
  4. a b c Grace Freeman: May Wedderburn Cannan: The Forgotten Female Poet of World War I. March 8, 2016, accessed on May 13, 2020 (English).
  5. May Wedderburn Cannan. In: poets.org. Academy of American Poets, accessed May 12, 2020 .