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Dalton, Annie Charlotte Armitage

Main entryDalton, Annie Charlotte Armitage
Birth placeBirkby, Huddersfield, Yorkshire, England
Birth date9 December 1865
Death placeVancouver, British Columbia
Death date12 January 1938
Identifier0259
Birth nameAnnie Charlotte Armitage
Married nameDalton
Marital statusmarried
Religious affiliationTheosophist
BiographyBorn in Huddersfield, England, Annie Charlotte Armitage (1865-1938) was raised from infancy by her maternal grandparents, James and Hannah Stoney, who educated her privately. She was afflicted with a childhood illness which left her almost totally deaf. Annie's siblings remained with their parents, John Armitage (c1837-) and Sarah Elizabeth Stoney (c1842-), until approximately the late 1870s when they moved in with the Stoneys as well, suggesting that their parents had died by this point. In 1891 Annie married businessman William Dalton (1866-c1953) and emigrated with him to Vancouver in 1904. They had one daughter. The Daltons contributed to the artistic life of Vancouver; William was director of the Vancouver Art Gallery while Annie served as vice-president of the Vancouver Poetry Club and was active in the Vancouver Poetry Society and the Vancouver branch of the Canadian Authors Association. Her literary friends included Mary Elizabeth Colman*, Joan S. Grigsby*, Audrey Alexandra Brown*, W.A. Deacon and Lorne Pierce. Also a skilled painter, Annie was recognized for her eleven volumes of verse by being named to the Order of the British Empire (1935), the only woman poet to be thus honoured. As well, she was posthumously awarded the Tweedsmuir medal for the best poem appearing in CANADIAN POETRY MAGAZINE during 1937. Annie died in Vancouver in 1938.
Honours and awardsOrder of the British Empire (1935); 1st place for unknown poem, Best Poem (CANADIAN POETRY MAGAZINE, 1937); Award for "Wheat and Barley," Tweedsmuir Medal (1938)
ResidencesHuddersfield, England (1865-c1903); Vancouver (1904-1938)
Geographic regionsBritish Columbia
Primary genrespoetry; non-fiction
BooksA SOUVENIR OF VANCOUVER (1906); THE MARRIAGE OF MUSIC (1910); A CHRISTMAS CAROL FOR ALL GOOD SOLDIERS AND SAILORS (1914); FLAME AND ADVENTURE (1924); SONGS AND CAROLS (1926); THE EAR TRUMPET (1926); THE SILENT ZONE (1926); THE AMBER-RIDERS (1929); THE CALL OF THE CARILLON (193-); THE NEIGHING NORTH (1931); THE FUTURE OF OUR POETRY (1931); LILIES AND LEOPARDS (1935)
PeriodicalsCANADIAN BOOKMAN; CANADIAN POETRY MAGAZINE; MONTREAL POETRY YEAR BOOK (1931)
Other publicationsAnthologized in: Bennett, NEW HARVESTING (1938); Carman and Pierce, OUR CANADIAN LITERATURE (1934); Fowler Wright, FROM OVERSEAS (1924); Garvin, CANADIAN POETS (1926); Garvin, CAP AND BELLS (1936); Gustafson, ANTHOLOGY OF CANADIAN POETRY (1942); Roberts, FLYING COLOURS (1942); Robins, POCKETFUL OF CANADA (1946); Stephen, GOLDEN TREASURY OF CANADIAN VERSE (1928); Stephen, VOICES OF CANADA (1926); Vancouver Poetry Society, BOOK OF DAYS (1946)
OrganizationsCanadian Authors Association, British Authors' Association, Bronte Society (England); Vancouver Poetry Society, New Westminster Fellowship Of Arts
Other artspainting
Father's nameJohn Armitage
Life dates of fatherc1837, Huddersfield, England - (likely) 1873, Huddersfield, England
Father's notesalesman, woollen cloth; unemployed in 1871
Mother's nameSarah Elizabeth Stoney
Life dates of motherc1842, Huddersfield, England - (possibly) late 1870s
Spouse 1William ("Willie") Dalton
Life dates of spouse 1c1866, Huddersfield, England - (likely) 28 March 1953, Vancouver
Spouse 1 notebusinessman; executive, Mainland Transfer; director, Vancouver Art Gallery
Marriage 1 date13 October 1891
Marriage 1 placeEngland
Children number1
Children's names and datesEdith Evelyn (1892-1981), m. to Sydney Dunn Scott
Biographical referencesFlemington, "Annie Charlotte Dalton (1865-1938): Biographical Notes and Bibliography," CANADIAN AUTHOR AND BOOKMAN 22 (September 1946), 42-44; 1871 England Census; 1881 England Census; 1891 England Census; 1901 England Census; British Columbia Death Index: 1872 to 1979
Bibliographic referencesWatters, CHECKLIST OF CANADIAN LITERATURE...1620-1960 (1970), pp. 53, 915
Research referencescomplete
Archival referencesAnnie Charlotte Dalton Papers, and letters in other collections (Lionel Haweis, Judge Howay, A.M. Pound, Margaret Cowie), University of British Columbia Special Collections and Archives; Dalton file, papers of the Vancouver Poetry Society, Vancouver City Archives; correspondence with W.A. Deacon, Deacon papers, Fisher Library, University of Toronto; extensive correspondence and manuscripts, Lorne and Edith Pierce collection, Queen's University Archives; typescript of THE AMBER-RIDERS, Queen's University; 54 letters to Elsie Pomeroy, Pomeroy papers, Mount Allison University; correspondence with Mrs. Thompson, Public Archives of British Columbia
Image creditsImage from John. W. Garvin, ed., CANADIAN POETS (2nd ed., Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1926).
CopyrightThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/. Please cite Canada's Early Women Writers. SFU Library Digital Collections. Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada. 1980-2014.