Women Writing on the Devon Land: A County's Women Who Wrote - circa 1965

  Remembering Edith Dart, Crediton’s Edwardian Novelist and Poet; As a novelist in “Miriam,” in “Likeness,” in “Rebecca Drew,” and especially in “Sareel,” Devon lives again' (Quotation from Obituary for Edith Dart by Mary Patricia Willcocks) The Grand Affair General Buller's Return to Crediton 1900 I am grateful to staff at Crediton Museum for locating the image. ‘Miss Edith Dart, attired in a costume of purple tweed with longer black picture hat presented Lady Audrey Buller with a magnificent shower bouquet with red, white and blue favours’. (The Scotsman 2 November 1900). General Buller's Return to Crediton 1900 I am grateful to staff at Crediton Museum for locating this image.        As far as I’m aware the vivid depiction in the passage above picturing  the young writer and  Crediton born woman who, at the time the article from which this quote was written and published in The Scotsman, 2nd November 1900, was about 27, is the only extant description of her. (And it is p

       Recently, whilst working on various documents and research leads sparked off by looking at catalogues of A2A and Devon Heritage Centre for as yet unnoticed unpublished writings by women, I've stumbled upon a group of authors at one time or other were closely associated with Devon, who wrote and published novels and fiction that previously I'd not known of. I'm rather excited about this discovery and have decided to take a bit of a break from searching into the archives and am instead currently doing the rounds of various search resources to find out more about each of the 'new' 'lost' authors for a future, probably next post on this blog. The original source was The Oxford Guide to Edwardian Fiction , a recently published compendium, and wonderful source book.     Although at this stage it is only a summary, I thought I'd make a preliminary start and share some of what I've found so far about the writers with a few links to such of the books

  Churchyard at Salcombe Regis Church      Ten years ago I posted a piece A Handful of 2012 Anniversaries: Devon Women Writers; Names and Texts  in commemoration of the anniversary dates of several women writers whose births or deaths or written texts were occurring that year. Then I posted a follow-up Devon Celebration 2016 . So what follows here is another celebratory catch-up piece featuring a handful of writers with special events coming up during 2022.  **** 'Believe me, nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won'. Cover of Lady de Lancey at Waterloo    I'll begin   200 years ago in 1822,   when Madeleine De Lancey died, on 22nd July.                 There's a post about Madeleine de Lancey on my earlier blog, Woman at Waterloo; Lady de Lancey; a Quiet Grave at Salcombe Regis . As I noted in that post Madeleine did not spend her life in Devon; in fact she was only briefly in Devon. The first page of Madeleine de Lancey's A Week at