Gladys Skelton
{{short description|Australian poet, playwright and author}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}
Gladys Skelton (6 September 1885 – 29 September 1975) was an Australian and United Kingdom poet, novelist and playwright who wrote using the pseudonym John Presland.
Early life
Gladys Skelton was born Gladys Williams in Melbourne in 1885.{{Cite web|title=Gladys Skelton|url=https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/A46970|access-date=30 July 2020|website=AusLit|archive-date=18 August 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190818092437/https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/A46970|url-status=live}}
Career
Skelton gained history honours at Girton College, Cambridge University and was a university lecturer in English literature and lecturer in history and economics.{{Cite journal|date=10 March 1928|title=Author of a new novel|journal=Illustrated London News|pages=14|via=British Newspaper Archive}}{{Cite news|date=18 November 1929|title=Women in the case|page=6|work=Staffordshire Sentinel|via=British Newspaper Archive}} She was one of a group of women writers who used a male pseudonym. In 1928, after a charge by Lord Birkenhead that women writers were inferior, she wrote in their defence and of her use of a pseudonym.{{Cite news|date=16 March 1928|title=Sex and the Novelist. A Defence of the Woman Writer|page=7|work=Nottingham Evening Post|via=British Newspaper Archive}}
Personal life
In 1920 Skelton obtained a divorce from her husband John Herbert Skelton on the grounds of desertion and adultery but the decree nisi was rescinded in 1921.{{Cite news|date=10 May 1921|title=Decree Rescinded. Skelton v. Skelton|page=4|work=The Times (London)|via=Times Digital Archive}} Skelton married Francis Edmund Bendit in Hampstead in March 1943.{{Cite news|date=22 March 1943|title=Marriages|page=1|work=The Times (London)|via=Times Digital Archive}}
Selected works
= Novels =
- Frustration (1925)
- Dominion (1925) - based on the life of Cecil Rhodes
- Barricade (1926)
- Escape me - Never! (1929){{Cite news|date=16 May 1928|title=For her Child's Sake|page=4|work=Leeds Mercury|via=British Newspaper Archive}}
- Mosaic (1929)
- The Charioteer (1930)
- Albatross (1931){{Cite news|date=23 September 1931|title=Airship Commander|page=6|work=Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer|via=British Newspaper Archive}}
= Poetry =
- The Deluge and Other Poems (1911)
- Songs of Changing Skies (1913)
- Poems of London and Other Verses (1918)
- The Shaken Reed (1943)
- Selected Poems (1961)
= Plays =
- The Marionettes (1907) - a puppet show{{Cite book|last=Nicoll|first=Allardyce|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/588815|title=English drama, 1900-1930; the beginnings of the modern period.|publisher=University Press|year=1973|isbn=0-521-08416-4|location=Cambridge [England]|pages=894|oclc=588815}}
- Joan of Arc (1909) - historical drama
- Mary Queen of Scots (1910) - historical drama
- Manin and the Defence of Venice (1911)
- Marcus Aurelius (1912)
- Belisarius, General of the East (1913)
- King Monmouth (1916)
- Satni (1929)
= Non-fiction =
- Vae Victis: the life of Ludwig von Benedek, 1804-1881. (1934)
- Women in the civilized state (1934)
References
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Category:20th-century Australian novelists
Category:20th-century Australian dramatists and playwrights
Category:20th-century Australian women writers
Category:20th-century Australian poets
Category:Australian women novelists
Category:Australian women dramatists and playwrights