Ruth Bedford

Ruth Bedford (2 August 1882 – 24 July 1963) was an Australian poet, playwright and fiction writer.

Ruth M. Bedford
Born
Ruth Marjory Bedford

(1882-08-02)2 August 1882
Petersham, New South Wales, Australia
Died24 July 1963(1963-07-24) (aged 80)
Paddington, New South Wales, Australia
NationalityAustralian
Occupationpoet, novelist and playwright

Career

Born in Petersham, Sydney, to Alfred Percival Bedford and Agnes Victoria Stephen, daughter of Sir Alfred Stephen, an influential chief justice, whose family she wrote about in her humorous book A Family Chronicle (1954).[1]

Ruth Bedford and her sisters Sylvia and Alfreda were educated at home by governesses. Bedford proved a talented verse writer from an early age: her first book, Rhymes by Ruth was published when she was eleven years old in 1893 (revised and reprinted 1896).[2]

Bedford wrote a number of poems for various Australian newspapers, especially The Sydney Morning Herald, where her poetry appeared over a 30-year period. The Brisbane Courier described her as a poet who "writes attractive verse, reflective and sensitive to a degree."[3]

In 1931, Ruth Bedford established the Sydney PEN Centre in collaboration with her friend, the poet Dorothea Mackellar.[4] As honorary secretary she traveled to Buenos Aires as the club's representative in 1936.[5] Bedford was also honorary secretary of the Zonta Club in Sydney in 1933[6] and a member of the Women's Pioneer Society.[7]

In 1953 Bedford received a grant from the Commonwealth Literary Fund to publish her chronicle of the Bedford and Stephen families, which was largely based on the diaries kept by her grandmother from 1846 to 1886.[8]

Ruth Bedford never married and died in Paddington, New South Wales in 1963.

Bibliography

Novels

Poetry
  • Rhymes (1893)
  • Sydney at Sunset and Other Verses (1911)
  • Rosycheeks and Goldenhead (1914)
  • Fairies and Fancies (1929) children's poetry
  • The Learner and Other Verses (1937)
  • Who's Who in Rhyme and Without Reason (1948)

Drama
  • Fear: A play in blank verse (1930)
  • The Murder Next Door (1931)
  • Postman's Knock (1932)

Biography
  • Think of Stephen: a family chronicle (1954)

Libretto
  • Cross Words and Cross Currents (1925)

References
  1. Australian Poets and Their Works, by William Wilde, Oxford University Press, 1996
  2. http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A130173b.htm Australian Dictionary of Biography
  3. "Australian Poetesses", The Brisbane Courier, 7 July 1928, p22
  4. The Quarterly Sydney PEN, issue 126 – november 2006
  5. "The P.E.N. Club", The Sydney Morning Herald, 14 July 1936, p10
  6. "The Life of Sydney". Daily Telegraph (Sydney, NSW : 1931 - 1954). 16 March 1933. p. 4. Retrieved 27 December 2018.
  7. "Pioneer Families". Sydney Mail (NSW : 1912 - 1938). 27 February 1935. p. 23. Retrieved 27 December 2018.
  8. "Flaming South Pacific Ball". Sunday Herald (Sydney, NSW : 1949 - 1953). 24 May 1953. p. 24. Retrieved 27 December 2018.
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