Mona Wilson
Mona Wilson (29 May 1872 – 26 October 1954) was a British civil servant and author. She is known for her scholarly work, including The Life of William Blake (1927) and other biographies of literary and historical figures. As a civil servant, she was one of the first women in the United Kingdom to earn equal pay for her work.
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Life
Wilson was born in Hillmorton Road, Rugby to James Wilson (headmaster of Clifton College ) and Annie Elizabeth Moore. She was educated at Clifton High School, Bristol; St Leonard's School, St Andrews; and Newnham College, Cambridge.[1] Wilson became interested in social and industrial problems after she graduated and went on to join the Women's Trade Union League.[1] Wilson became secretary of the Women's Trade Union League in 1899.[2]:71
After being appointed to the National Insurance Commission in 1911, she received a yearly salary of £1000, making her the highest-paid woman civil servant of the time and one of the first women to receive equal pay in the United Kingdom.[3] In 1917, she was involved in creating a mothers' Pensions bill.[4] In 1919, she retired from civil service and began to work on her writing.[5]
In 1932, she was made an Associate of Cambridge University.[6]
Writing
She wrote several scholarly works after her retirement from the civil service in 1919, including The Life of William Blake (1927),[7][5]:73 which went through several reprintings and remained popular for several decades.[3] Her biography of William Blake was considered to be very accessible by Angus Whitehead.[5] The Guardian wrote that Wilson "told his story more fully and sensibly than anyone else."[8] The Observer states that her biography was "the most satisfactory since Gilchrist."[9]
Wilson was featured in Grand Tour: A Journey in the Tracks of the Age of Aristocracy (1935), where she contributes a piece about the Wife of Bath.[10]
Jane Austen and Some Contemporaries (1938) describes the biographies of Jane Austen and several women who were her contemporaries.[11] The book was described by The Guardian as being very thorough in its understanding of the people of Austen's time, though a little difficult to follow if the reader is not familiar with the time period.[12]
Wilson also published a short story under the nom de plume "An Ordeal" in The Nation in 1909 and a novella "The Story of Rosalind Retold From Her Diary" as "Monica Moore" in 1910.[2]:73
Publications
- Our Industrial Laws: Working Women in Factories, Workshops, Shops and Laundries and How to Help Them. London: Duckworth. 1899. OCLC 923922965.
- These Were Muses. London: Sidgwick and Jackson. 1924. OCLC 884049119.
- The Life of William Blake. London: The Nonsuch Press. 1927. OCLC 973439003.
- Sir Philip Sidney. London: Duckworth. 1931. OCLC 753238584.
- Elizabeth, Queen of England. Edinburgh: Peter Davies Ltd. 1932. OCLC 606433685.
- Victoria, Queen of Great Britain. London: P. Davies Ltd. 1933. OCLC 2194597.
- Jane Austen and Some Contemporaries. London: Cresset Press. 1938. OCLC 222021464.
- Johnson, Prose and Poetry. London: Rupert Hart-Davis. 1950. OCLC 852820674.
References
- Hartley, Cathy (15 April 2013). A Historical Dictionary of British Women. Routledge. ISBN 9781135355333.
- Whitehead, Angus (2012). Blake 2.0: William Blake in Twentieth-Century Art, Music and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9780230280335.
- Mona Wilson. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/70137.
- Pedersen, Susan (25 August 1995). Family, Dependence, and the Origins of the Welfare State: Britain and France, 1914–1945. Cambridge University Press. p. 169. ISBN 9780521558341.
- Whitehead, Angus (24 January 2012). "'New Matter': Mona Wilson's The Life of William Blake 85 Years On". In Clark, Steve; Connolly, T.; Whittaker, Jason (eds.). Blake 2.0: William Blake in Twentieth-Century Art, Music and Culture. Springer. ISBN 9780230366688.
- "Miss Mona Wilson". The Guardian. 30 October 1954. p. 8. Retrieved 2 October 2017 – via Newspapers.com.
- Mona Wilson (1932). The Life of William Blake. R. O. Ballou.
- "Blake". The Guardian. 1949. p. 3. Retrieved 2 October 2017 – via Newspapers.com.
- Evans, B. Ifor (26 June 1949). "A New Kind of Man". The Observer. p. 7. Retrieved 2 October 2017 – via Newspapers.com.
- Laver, James (1 December 1935). "Grand Tour". The Observer. p. 23. Retrieved 2 October 2017 – via Newspapers.com.
- Hayward, John (21 August 1938). "Pre-Victorian Girlhood". The Observer. p. 5. Retrieved 2 October 2017 – via Newspapers.com.
- Stocks, Mary (6 September 1938). "In the Days of the Regency". The Guardian. p. 5. Retrieved 2 October 2017 – via Newspapers.com.