Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall (14 September 1883, Gunnersbury, London – 19 April 1922, Vancouver), was a Canadian writer who was born in England but lived in Canada from the time she was seven. She was once "thought to be the best Canadian poet of her generation."
Marjorie Pickthall was born in 1883 in the west London district of Gunnersbury, to Arthur Christie Pickthall, a surveyor and the son of a Church of England clergyman, and Elizabeth Helen Mary Pickthall (née Mallard), daughter of an officer in the Royal Navy, part Irish and part Huguenot.
According to her father, Pickthall had planned her career before she was six; she would be a writer and illustrator of books. Her parents encouraged her artistic talents with lessons in drawing Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall (14 September 1883, Gunnersbury, London – 19 April 1922, Vancouver), was a Canadian writer who was born in England but lived in Canada from the time she was seven. She was once "thought to be the best Canadian poet of her generation."
Marjorie Pickthall was born in 1883 in the west London district of Gunnersbury, to Arthur Christie Pickthall, a surveyor and the son of a Church of England clergyman, and Elizabeth Helen Mary Pickthall (née Mallard), daughter of an officer in the Royal Navy, part Irish and part Huguenot.
According to her father, Pickthall had planned her career before she was six; she would be a writer and illustrator of books. Her parents encouraged her artistic talents with lessons in drawing and music; an accomplished violinist, she continued studying violin until she was twenty.
According to The Canadian Encyclopedia From an early age [Pickthall] contributed stories to the magazines and newspapers; and before her first book appeared, her genius was recognized. She sold her first story, "Two-Ears", to the Toronto Globe for $3 in 1898, when she was still a student at Bishop Strachan.
"Two-Ears" (along with one of Pickthall's poems) would go on the next year to win The Mail and Empire's writing competition. By the age of 17 she was writing for both the Mail and Empire and the Globe, contributing to their "Young people's corner" and "Circle of young Canada" pages.
Pickthall was 38 years old when, 12 days after surgery, she died of an embolism in Vancouver in 1922. She is buried beside her mother in St. James Cemetery. Although her father was her executor her estate was bequeathed to her aunt, Laura Mallard, in whose home she had done most of her writing.
A collection of her poems and a volume of her collected short stories were both published posthumously.
"Her father compiled and published her Collected Poems in 1925 and again, definitively, in 1936."...more
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