The Contemplative Quarry.

FIRST EDITION, very faint spots to prelims, occasionally recurrent to margins within, pp. 40, crown 8vo, original orange wrappers, faintly dustsoiled to front, a little chipped and nicked at overhanging edges, very good. Scarce. The author's second book of poetry, but the first under this name - her pre-War debut being 'Songs of John Oland' (1911). The publisher, Harold Monro, nurtured what Joy Grant terms her 'uncouth talent' (p. 121), and she would go on to establish a reputation on both sides of the Atlantic - but the 'constant conflict between domestic duties' to her husband and four sons 'and her desire to write' (ibid) created a tension, often explicit in her verse, with deleterious psychological effects. Wickham was born Edith Alice Mary Harper; she spent the bulk of her childhood in Australia and, having completed her education there, returned to her native England and embarked on training for an acting and singing career - these aspirations curtailed by the conditions of her marriage to Patrick Hepburn. Their union, though yielding four sons, does not seem to have been a happy one, and bitter recriminations are a feature of her verse - in retaliation, he had her committed to an asylum in 1913, following her release from which, her career, now as 'Anna Wickham', began in earnest with this book, written whilst in the Hampstead circles of David Garnett and D.H. Lawrence. Wickham left for Paris in the early 1920s in the company of her eldest son, where she developed a friendship and infatuation with Natalie Clifford Barney.…