Identity area
Type of entity
Authorized form of name
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
- Pickthall, Marjorie L.C.
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
History
Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall (1883–1922) was a librarian, a writer and a poet. She was born in Gunnersby, Middlesex, England, the daughter of Arthur C. Pickthall and Helen Mallard. She died in Vancouver, British Columbia, following an operation.
She moved with her family to Southwater, Sussex, then to Toronto, Ontario in 1889. She was educated at St. Mildred’s College and Bishop Strachan School. She sold her first story, “Two-Ears” to The Globe (a Toronto newspaper) while still a student at Bishop Strachan School. She was employed as an assistant librarian at Victoria University Library, Toronto, from 1910 to 1912 and her writing was published in several periodicals during that time, including Acta Victoriana, a student literary journal at Victoria College.
Pickthall moved to England in 1912 and lived near Salisbury until 1919. She participated in World War I as an ambulance driver, a farm labourer and a library clerk. She wrote many short stories and poems during this period. After the war she returned to Toronto, then moved to Vancouver, where she continued to write.
Pickthall published over two hundred short stories and approximately one hundred poems along with numerous articles in journals such as Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, and Scribner’s. She also contributed to young people’s magazines. Her publications include: The Drift of Pinions (1913), Lamp of Poor Souls and Other Poems (1916), Little Hearts (1916), The Bridge: A Story of the Great Lakes (1922), The Woodcarver’s Wife and Other Poems (1922), Angels’ Shoes: And Other Stories (1923), Little Songs: A Book of Poems (1925), and The Complete Poems of Marjorie Pickthall (1927).
She is buried at the St. James Cemetery in Toronto.