Margaret Stanley-Wrench

English poet and novelist

Margaret Stanley-Wrench (1916 – 10 January 1974) was an English poet and novelist.^[1]

Life

Stanley-Wrench was the daughter of William Stanley-Wrench (1879-1951) and his wife, Mollie Stanley-Wrench (Violet Louisa Stanley-Wrench, née Gibbs; 1880-1966). Her mother was a novelist, cookery writer and journalist who used the byline "Mrs Stanley Wrench".^[2][3][4][5] Margaret attended Channing School in Highgate. As an undergraduate at Somerville College, Oxford, she was the winner of the Newdigate Prize in 1937,^[6] becoming only the fifth female winner. Her poems had already appeared in Oxford Poetry and would appear in Time and Tide magazine and in Augury: an Oxford Miscellany (1940).^[7] Her first poetry collection was published in 1938.

At Oxford, Stanley-Wrench met the poet Keith Douglas, who became a friend.^[8] She continued to write poetry, but after the war became better known as a children's writer. Her work was included in New Poems 1965, edited by Clifford Dyment.^[9]

A collection of Stanley-Wrench's papers, including manuscripts and correspondence, is held by the Lockwood Library of the University at Buffalo.^[10]

Publications

Novels

• The Rival Riding Schools (1952)
• How Much For A Pony? (1955)
• The Conscience of a King: The story of Thomas More (1962)
• The Silver King: Edward the Confessor, the Last Great Anglo-Saxon Ruler (1966)^[11]
• Chaucer, Teller of Tales (1967)

Poetry

• News Reel and Other Poems (1938)
• A Tale for the Fall of the Year, and other poems (1959)

Drama

• The Splendid Burden (1954)
• Harlequin's Revenge (1955)

References

1. Richard Burton (20 July 2020). Simplify me: The life of Keith Douglas. Infinite Ideas Limited. p. 299. ISBN 978-1-910902-84-4.
2. "The General Fiction Magazine Index". philsp.com. Retrieved 11 July 2024.
3. Desiderata. F.W. Preece. 1934. p. 6.
4. Wrench, Mrs Stanley (7 January 1933). "Home Life column (editor)". Pearson's Weekly (2215): 800.
5. "A Porterhouse Steak by Mrs. Stanley Wrench". The Royal Magazine. 38: 11–15. 1917.
6. Jane Dowson (21 February 2008). Women's Poetry of the 1930s: A Critical Anthology. Routledge. p. 204. ISBN 978-1-134-79054-8.
7. Alexander Mackenzie Hardie; Keith Castellain Douglas (1940). Augury: An Oxford Miscellany of Verse & Prose. B. Blackwell.
8. John Carey (21 April 2020). A Little History of Poetry. Yale University Press. p. 255. ISBN 978-0-300-25252-1.
9. Clifford Dyment (1966). New Poems. Michael Joseph. p. 217.
10. Location Register of Twentieth-century English Literary Manuscripts and Letters: A Union List of Papers of Modern English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh Authors in the British Isles. G.K. Hall. 1988. p. 903. ISBN 978-0-8161-8981-6.
11. The New York Times Book Review. Arno Press. 1966.