Wellesley, Dorothy (1889–1956)

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Wellesley, Dorothy (1889–1956)

English poet. Name variations: Duchess of Wellington. Born Dorothy Violet Ashton in White Waltham, Berkshire, England, on July 20, 1889; died in Withyham, Sussex, England, on July 11, 1956; daughter of Robert Ashton and Lucy Cecilia Dunn Gardner Ashton; tutored at home by foreign governesses; married Lord Gerald Wellesley, 7th duke of Wellington; children: one daughter, one son.

Considered somewhat of a rebel from her upperclass upbringing, Dorothy Wellesley wrote poetry at an early age. Her books include Early Poems (1913), Pride (1923), Lost Lane (1925), Genesis: An Impression (1926), Matrix (1928), Deserted House (1930), Jupiter and the Nun (1932), Sir George Goldie, Founder of Nigeria (1934), Poems of Ten Years, 1924–1934 (1934), Selections from the Poems of Dorothy Wellesley, with an introduction by William Butler Yeats (1936), Lost Planet (1942), The Poets (1943), Desert Wells (1946), Rhymes for Middle Years (1954), and Early Light: The Collected Poems (1955). She published her autobiography, Far Have I Travelled, in 1952.

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