Conocimiento común

Nombre canónico: Hyde, Robin
Nombre legal: Wilkinson, Iris Guiver
Otros nombres: Hyde, Robin
Fecha de nacimiento: 1906-01-19
Fecha de fallecimiento: 1939-08-23
Lugar de sepultura: Kensington New Cemetery, Gunnersbury, London, England, UK
Género: female
Nacionalidad: New Zealand
Lugar de nacimiento: Cape Town, South Africa
Lugar de fallecimiento: London, England, UK
Lugares de residencia: Wellington, New Zealand
Queen Mary Hospital, Hanmer Springs, New Zealand
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
London, England, UK
Educación: Wellington Girls' College, Wellington, New Zealand
Victoria University of Wellington
Ocupaciones: poet
journalist
writer
novelist
Relaciones: Sweetman, Harry
Hyde, Frederick de Mulford (lover and father of her child)
Hyde, Christopher Robin (stillborn child whose name she used)
Challis, Derek (son)
Biografía breve: Robin Hyde was the pen name of Iris Wilkinson, born in Cape Town, South Africa, to an English father and an Australian mother. When she was still a baby, the family immigrated to Wellington, New Zealand. She began writing poetry as a child. She attended Wellington Girls' College, and published short stories and poems in the school magazine. She also began submitting her work to New Zealand and Australian publications. After graduating, she briefly attended Victoria University of Wellington. At age 18, she had repeated knee surgeries that resulted in a permanent disability and dependency on painkillers. In 1925, she became a reporter for the conservative Dominion newspaper, mostly writing for the women's pages. The following year, at age 20, she resigned from the newspaper after discovering she was pregnant from a love affair, and moved to Sydney, Australia. There she had a stillborn son whom she named Robin Hyde, later taking the name as her pseudonym. She returned to New Zealand, where she had a breakdown and was hospitalized for some months. When she began to write again, her poems were accepted by several New Zealand newspapers in 1927. She was also hired to write for the Christchurch Sun, and the Mirror, but was frustrated at being sidelined to social columns, experiences that led to her book Journalese (1934).

In 1929, she published her first book of poetry, The Desolate Star. She later became an editor at the New Zealand Observer and wrote on a variety of issues and topics. In 1933 she tried to drown herself and was hospitalized again for four years, during which she continued to write. She published five novels in the ensuing years: Passport to Hell (1936), Check To Your King (1936), Wednesday's Children (1937), Nor the Years Condemn (1938), and semi-autobiographical The Godwits Fly (1938). In 1938, Hyde resolved to travel by ship to England to seek experience and recognition and to meet her publishers. From a stop-over in Hong Kong, she visited Shanghai and Canton, then under Japanese occupation. Some of her finest poems and numerous articles emerged from this extraordinary journey into a war zone. She was assaulted by Japanese soldiers and sustained a painful eye injury. Eventually she managed to reach England in September 1938. Although ill and penniless, she became involved in the China Campaign Committee, the Left Book Club and the Suffragette Fellowship.
She was in and out of hospitals, suffering from depression, dysentery and anemia.
Robin Hyde took her own life with an overdose of Benzedrine in 1939 at the age of 33. Today she is considered one of New Zealand's major writers.
Aviso de desambiguación: Robin Hyde was the pen name of Iris Wilkinson.

Miembros

Debates

151. The Godwits Fly by Robin Hyde en Backlisted Book Club (marzo 2022)

Reseñas

The Godwits Fly por Robin Hyde

This was a book club book. I'm really enjoying this book club as the titles are all local stories/authors so it's a nice way to get to know NZ but I could not get into this one. Lovely writing but it's pretty autobiographical which reads too much like a memoir for me. I'd rather just read a biography of Robin Hyde who was a very interesting woman and writer.

Denunciada

sgwordy | otra reseña | Dec 31, 2022 |

The Godwits Fly (117) por Robin Hyde

Persephone book 117 The Godwits Fly is a semi-autobiographical novel by New Zealand author Robin Hyde (born Iris Wilkinson), of which I had extraordinary high hopes. The prose is glorious, poetic and continually a delight to read. Hyde’s descriptions of landscape particularly are sumptuous as are the snippets of poetry we get throughout the novel. However, while there is nothing to actually dislike about this novel, I found myself slightly underwhelmed though I don’t know why. Perhaps I just expected a little too much, it is still a very good novel. Robin Hyde’s writing style is not always easy, her prose as I have said is wonderful, but it isn’t always straightforward, not always conventional, the perspective alters a little as the characters in the novel grow up.

Iris Wilkinson, (AKA Robin Hyde) was a journalist, novelist and poet, born in South Africa, she moved with her family to Wellington, New Zealand when she was a child. Like the character, Eliza – who is at the centre of The Godwits Fly Iris was born into a family who considered themselves English. They can’t help but keep their eyes turned North – to the England they never travel to. They strive hard to be conventional, and limit the influence of children from other families, and in doing this of course they never really fit in anywhere. The Godwits of the title are a small migratory bird – that fly North from New Zealand at summers end, though they don’t go to England, they fly to Siberia. As Robin Hyde explains in her foreword…

“And it is true, too, that the godwits flying north, never go near England. They fly to Siberia. But to a child in this book, it was all more simple. A long way was a long way. North was mostly England, or a detour to England.”

In reading this novel it is hard to be sure where Iris’s life ends and Eliza’s begins, there are so many sad parallels between their lives. Iris Wilkinson’s life ended in 1939 just before the outbreak of World War two – she killed herself, after only about a year in England. The novel doesn’t end like that – though the seeds of great sadness have been sown for Eliza who as the novel ends is just twenty-one.

The novel opens when Eliza Hannay is a child, she has one older sister and one younger – some years later a baby brother is born. The family move house regularly – Eliza’s childhood memories a series of less than perfect rented houses, going from the hills down into the suburbs of Wellington. Here Eliza’s mother Augusta struggles to maintain an air of respectability on her office clerk husband’s salary. Mr Hannay is something of a trial to his wife, they row a lot, and seem to have little in common. John Hannay reads voraciously – bringing home a variety of colourful characters with whom he enjoys socialist debate. My favourite section of the novel was the first half – when Eliza and her siblings are growing up, playing, having childhood adventures, going to school and observing the complicated world of their adult parents with the honest eyes of childhood.

“‘Daddy got drunk once, and I hit him over the head with my hobby-horse,’ said Eliza. Augusta’s profile went bleak and set, though she only said. ‘Trust you for remembering.’ Eliza wondered, ‘what is the little jumpy thing that makes you talk out loud when you promised you weren’t going to?’”

As the siblings get older – other influences come into play. However, Eliza and her sister Carly can’t entirely free themselves of the home influences. Carly becomes engaged – for a while, and toys with the idea of nursing before discovering her mistake. Eliza – who from childhood has written poetry – is more complex than her sister. She feels that like the godwits they need to fly, fly away to England, at school she is mocked rather for her devotion to a place she has never been. Eliza falls in love with Timothy Cardew – one of her father’s socialist friends. Timothy loves Eliza too – though not enough to stay with her. Timothy dreams of travel and exploration, and so Eliza is left behind – though Timothy writes from time to time. Timothy inspires much of the poetry that Eliza writes, eventually producing a small book of her poetry. There is a lovely scene where her father attempts to move his daughters poorly printed little book into a more prominent position is his local bookshop – much to the fury of the assistant. The bookseller explains how local produced books are not expected to sell.

“Courage is a beautiful sleek horse, she thought, a thoroughbred, with its eyes blazing and the wind tapering round its ardent flanks. It is sensitive and swift, nerved for the one crucial thing. I haven’t got that. Only the slow, prodding mule-gait: and I give in often, and cry for help, but when help doesn’t come, I can manage, as a rule.”

More sadness is to follow for Eliza – I don’t want to talk about all that occurs in the novel – although most of it seems to mirror Iris Wilkinson’s own life – and Ann Thwaite’s preface to the Persephone edition tells us the sad story of where the name Robin Hyde came from.

All in all, there is an awful lot to like in this book, and thinking about it retrospectively now, my slight feeling of being underwhelmed might have had more to do with my mood than anything else.… (más)