by George Dance

Ethelwyn Wetherald
Wetherald in Canadian Poets (1916)
Born	Agnes Ethelwyn Wetherald April 26, 1857 Rockwood, Ontario
Died	March 9, 1940 (aged 82)
Pen name	Bel Thistlethwaite
Occupation	journalist
Nationality	Canadian
Citizenship	British subject
Notable work(s)	The Last Robin (1907)

Agnes Ethelwyn Wetherald (April 26, 1857 - March 9, 1940) was a Canadian poet.^[1]

Contents 1 Life 2 Writing 3 Publications 3.1 Poetry 3.2 Fiction 4 See also 5 References 6 External links 7 Comments

LifeEdit

She was born at Rockwood, Ontario, the daughter of Rev. William Wetherald, a Quaker minister. She was educated at the Friends' Boarding School in Union, New York, and at Pickering College.^[2]

She sold her first poem to St. Nicholas Magazine at 17, and soon was contributing to many publications throughout Canada and the United States, including The Globe, The Week, and Rose-Belford's Canadian Magazine. She co-wrote a novel, An Algonquin Maiden (1887), with Graeme Mercer Adam, and in 1895 published her first volume of poetry.^[3]

She worked for several decades as a proofreader, journalist, and editorial assistant at newspapers in Ontario and the north-eastern United States.^[4] For a time she 'conducted the Women's Department' of the under the pseudonym "Bel Thistlethwait."^[2]

She adopted a child, Dorothy, in 1911 when she was 54, and in 1921 published a book of children's verse, Tree-Top Mornings, dedicated to Dorothy.^[3]

WritingEdit

Reviewing her 1907 book, The Last Robin, The Globe pronounced: "The salient quality of Miss Wetherald's work is its freshness of feeling, a perennial freshness, renewable as spring. This has a setting of harmonious form, for the poet's ear is delicately attuned to the value of words, both as to the sound and the meaning.... The sonnets are an important part of the volume, and, to some minds, will represent the most important part. Miss Wetherald's sonnets are flowing in expression and harmonious in thought; some are beautiful."^[2]

The Dictionary of Literary Biography calls the best of her poems "musical, restrained, and precise," and "equal to much of the work of her better-known Canadian contemporaries such as Archibald Lampman, Bliss Carman, and Duncan Campbell Scott." On occasion, it adds, "her themes and images recall the poetry of Emily Dickinson."^[5]

PublicationsEdit

PoetryEdit

• The House of the Trees and other poems. Toronto: William Briggs, 1895.
• Tangled in Stars: Poems. Boston: Richard G. Badger, 1902.
• The Radiant Road. Boston: Richard G. Badger, 1904.
• The Last Robin: Lyrics and Sonnets. Toronto: William Briggs, 1907.
• Poems, Lyrics, and Sonnets. Toronto: Musson, 191?.
• Tree-top Mornings. Boston: Cornhill, 1921.
• Lyrics and Sonnets. 1931.^[3]

FictionEdit

• An Algonquin maiden: a romance of the early days of Upper Canada (with Graeme Mercer Adam). London: S. Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1887.^[6]

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy the University of Toronto.^[1]

See alsoEdit

• List of Canadian poets

ReferencesEdit

External linksEdit

Poems

• Two poems by Ethelwyn Wetherald ("A Winter Picture," "To February")
• Selected Poetry of Ethelwyn Wetherald (1857-1940) (6 poems) at Representative Poetry Online.
• Ethelwyn Wetherald in Canadian Poets: 15 poems.
• Ethelwyn Wetherald at PoemHunter.

About

• "Ethelwyn Wetherald" in Hidden Rooms.