- Rosamund Stanhope
Rosamund Stanhope (1919-2005) is a British poet and teacher known for her exuberant use of esoteric and unusual words.
Born
4 March 1919 inNorthampton , the daughter of a Latvian (German by adoption)leather merchant who changed his name after her birth from Sternberg to Stanhope, Rosamund Stanhope grew up in a classically wealthy and distant British family setting, boarding at two independent schools. She trained as an actress at the Central School of Speech and Drama and embarked on her career at the Northgate Theatre, Exeter, but was diverted by the outbreak of the Second World War. She joined up as a WREN, and spent the war as aradio mechanic in Craile, Scotland. After the war she married and returned to the Central School to train as a teacher.She was not a very prolific writer; she was after all also wife, mother and a dedicated teacher. She regularly had individual poems published in various literary magazines (and others, including for example the New Statesman), and her first book of poetry was published in March 1962 at the Scorpion Press. The year after this she completed a degree in English, and broke her spine in an accident. Partially paralysed and psychologically traumatised, she was hospitalised for a string of related problems over 30 times in the following six years, and thereafter suffered chronic and intense pain.
She maintained her teaching position, finally retiring in 1987, aged 68, and continued writing, producing seven unpublished novels as well as the normal stream of poetry. More of her poems were published in the 1990s, and her work was much admired. Two collections of her poems were published by
Peterloo Press at this time. She died peacefully at home in December 2005, aged 86.Published works
*So I looked down to Camelot - 1962
*Lapidary (1991)
*No Place for the Maudlin Heart (2001)Sources
* [http://news.independent.co.uk/people/obituaries/article332493.ece Obituary]
* [http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/research/fa/scorpion.html Paper collection at University of Texas at Austin:]
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