Susan Miles

Susan Miles was the pen name of Ursula Wyllie Roberts (1887–1975).

Biography

She was born at Meerut in India, where her father was in the British military.[1][2] He was Lieutenant-Colonel Robert John Humphrey Wyllie and her mother was Emily Titcomb.[3][4]

Under her own name, she wrote a pamphlet The Cause of Purity and Women's Suffrage which was published by the Church League for Women's Suffrage in 1912.[5]

As Susan Miles, she published several slim volumes of poetry: Dunch (1918),[6] Annotations (1922),[7] Little Mirrors (1923?),[8][9] The Hares (1924),[10] News! News! (1943?), Rainbows (1962),[11] A Morsel of Gold (1962)[12] and Epigrams and Jingles (1962)[13] as well as the more famous novel in verse Lettice Delmer (1958, reprinted by Persephone Books in 2002), two other novels (Blind Men Crossing a Bridge (1934) and Rabboni (1942))[14][15] and a biography of her husband, Rev. William Corbett Roberts,[16] Portrait of a Parson (1955).[17] Dunch was sufficiently significant to earn her a reasonably positive mention in Harold Monro's often unforgiving Some Contemporary Poets (1920) and Herbert Palmer described her as "One [of] the most original" in the chapter on Women Poets in his 1938 study of post-Victorian poetry.[18][19] She also edited Childhood in Verse and Prose (1923)[20] and An Anthology of Youth in Verse and Prose (1925).[21]

References
  1. Women's Library, http://www.aim25.ac.uk/cats/65/10321.htm [Retrieved 2012-08-01]
  2. Online Archive of California, Guide to the Roberts, Ursula, Incoming correspondence, ca. 1910-1960, Collection Number M0908, http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/ft6t1nb1kj/ [Retrieved 2011-12-24]
  3. Memoirs of a Soldier's Daughter, www.wyllie.org.nz/documents/memoirs_of_a_soldiers_daughter.doc [Retrieved 2012-07-31]
  4. The Women's Library, London Metropolitan University, http://www.aim25.ac.uk/cats/65/10321.htm [Retrieved 2012-01-12]
  5. Online Archive of California, Guide to the Roberts, Ursula, Incoming correspondence, ca. 1910-1960, Collection Number M0908, http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/ft6t1nb1kj/ [Retrieved 2012-08-01]
  6. Miles, S., 1918. "Dunch", Oxford: B.H.Blackwell; "Dunch" is Number XVIII in Blackwell's "Adventurers All" series.
  7. Miles, S., 1922. "Annotations", Oxford: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press.
  8. Miles, S., (no date) "Little Mirrors and other studies in free-verse", Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
  9. The date is estimated as 1923 as there is a signed copy from 'Susan Miles' dated Christmas 1923 and as "Annotations" of 1922 lists Miles as the author of "Dunch" but not of "Little Mirrors". Becky Lewis, in the DLB (see Further Reading), gives the date as 1924.
  10. Miles, S., 1924. "The Hares and other verses", London: Elkin Mathews.
  11. Miles, S., 1962. "Rainbows and other verses", Moggerhanger Bedford: The Romany Press.
  12. Miles, S., 1962. "A Morsel of Gold and other studies", Moggerhanger Bedford: The Romany Press.
  13. Miles, S., 1962. "Epigrams and Jingles", Moggerhanger Bedford: The Romany Press.
  14. Orlando, Women's Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present, http://orlando.cambridge.org/public/svPeople?person_id=milesu [Retrieved 2011-12-24]
  15. Online Archive of California, Guide to the Roberts, Ursula, Incoming correspondence, ca. 1910-1960, Collection Number M0908, http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/ft6t1nb1kj/ [Retrieved 2011-12-24]
  16. The Women's Library, London Metropolitan University, http://www.aim25.ac.uk/cats/65/10321.htm [Retrieved 2012-01-12]
  17. Persephone Books, http://www.persephonebooks.co.uk/pages/authors/?id=57 [Retrieved 2012-01-12]
  18. Monro, H., 1920."Some Contemporary Poets (1920)", London: Leonard Parsons.
  19. Palmer, H. 1938 "Post-Victorian Poetry", London: J.M.Dent & Sons Ltd.
  20. Miles, S., 1923. "Childhood in Verse and Prose an anthology", Oxford: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press.
  21. Miles, S., 1925. "An Anthology of Youth in Verse and Prose", London: John Lane, The Bodley Head.

Further reading
  • Lewis, B.W., "Susan Miles (Ursula Wyllie Roberts)" pp150–157 in Thesing W.B. (Ed), 2001. Dictionary of Literary Biography - Volume Two Hundred Forty - Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century British Women Poets, Detroit: The Gale Group. This is an essay which outlines Susan Miles' life and work.
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