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Coleman, Helena Jane

Main entryColeman, Helena Jane
Birth placeNewcastle, Durham, Ontario
Birth date27 April 1860
Death placeToronto, Ontario
Death date7 December 1953
Identifier0248
Birth nameHelena Jane Coleman
Alternate namesCaleb Black, Catherine G. Brown, Helen Gray Cone, Hollis Cattwin, L.D. Clark, Winifred Cotter, Winnifred Cotter, A.T. Cottingham, Winnifred Ford, Mrs. R.H. Hudson, Hollis Hume, Shadwell Jones, Annie Lloyd, M.D. Merrivale, Helen Saxon, Helen A. Saxon, Emily A. Sykes, Gwendolen Woodworth, Gwendolyn Woodworth, Frances Alexander, Ralph Hodgson, F.G. Pearson, Maxwell Wallace and Dorothea West.
Marital statussingle
Religious affiliationWesleyan Methodist
Paid workteacher (music)
BiographyAlthough most accounts list Emmeline Maria Adams, a descendant of John Quincy Adams and sister of Mary Electa Adams*, as the mother of Helena Jane Coleman (1860-1953), and although Emmeline brought four half-brothers into the world for Helena, Reverend Francis Coleman's (1813-1900) first wife had already passed away two years before Helena's 1860 birth in Newcastle, Ontario. Information about Helena's biological mother is sparse: Jane Gould (c1827-c1862) was born in Bath, England in about 1827, and likely died prior to 1863, the year in which Reverend Coleman married his third wife and the woman who would have the most maternal influence on Helena, Jane Ann Huff (c1821-). Not slowed down by a crippling childhood attack of polio, Helena completed her education at the Ontario Ladies' College in Whitby, where she then taught music and headed the music department for a period. In addition to a one-year sabbatical to do post-graduate studies in music in Berlin, Coleman travelled extensively in Europe, the United States, Canada, Bermuda and Capri. Helena lived primarly in Toronto where her large circle of friends extended to include Marjorie Pickthall*, Marjory MacMurchy*, Elsie Pomeroy, J.K. Foran, Agnes Maule Machar* and Ethelwyn Wetherald*. Author of four books, three of verse and one novel, she published extensively in American periodicals under a variety of pseudonyms, with Paul Reynolds as her literary agent. Helena never married, and besides summer visits to the family cottage in the Thousand Islands, resided in Toronto with her brother, Canadian geologist Arthur Philemon Coleman. One of her other brothers was Canadian journalist and writer, Albert Evander Coleman. Helena died in 1953.
Other notesCritic Jennifer Chambers documents an intense emotional relationship between Coleman and poet Ethelwyn Wetherald; see "'You Woman-Hearted, Poet-Brained Wonder Worker,': The Poetic Dialogue of Love Between Ethelwyn Wetherald and Helena Coleman," CANADIAN POETRY 57 (Fall/Winter 2005): 65-85.
ResidencesNewcastle, Ontario (1860, 1861); Cavan Township, Ontario (1871); Whitby, Ontario (1880-); Hamilton, Ontario (1891); Toronto, Ontario (1901, 1911, 1953)
Geographic regionsOntario
Primary genrespoetry; fiction
BooksSONGS AND SONNETS (1906); MARCHING MEN: WAR VERSES (1917); SHEILA AND OTHERS: THE SIMPLE ANNALS OF AN UNROMANTIC HOUSEHOLD (1920); SONGS: BEING A SELECTION OF EARLIER SONGS AND SONNETS (1937)
PeriodicalsATLANTIC MONTHLY; CANADIAN GOOD HOUSEKEEPING; CANADIAN PUBLIC HEALTH JOURNAL; COSMOPOLITAN; DELINEATOR; HARPER'S; LADIES' HOME JOURNAL; LIPPINCOTT; NATIONAL MONTHLY; NORTHWEST MAGAZINE; READER MAGAZINE; ROSE-BELFORD's' SATURDAY EVENING POST; SMART SET; etc.
Other publicationsAnthologized in: Burpee, CENTURY OF CANADIAN SONNETS (1910); Burpee, FLOWERS FROM A CANADIAN GARDEN (1909); Campbell, OXFORD BOOK OF CANADIAN VERSE (1913); Carman and Pierce, OUR CANADIAN LITERATURE (1934); Caswell, CANADIAN SINGERS AND THEIR SONGS (1919, 1925); Creighton and Ridley, NEW CANADIAN ANTHOLOGY (1938); Dickie, THE CANADIAN POETRY BOOK (1922); Garvin, CANADIAN POEMS OF THE GREAT WAR (1918); Garvin, CANADIAN POETS (1926); Gustafson, ANTHOLOGY OF CANADIAN POETRY (1942); Stephen, VOICES OF CANADA (1926)
OrganizationsCanadian Authors Association, Dickens Fellowship, Tennyson Club
Other artsmusic
Father's nameReverend Francis C. Coleman
Life dates of father6 October 1813, Cornwall, England - 15 June 1900, Hamilton, Ontario; m. 1845 to Emmeline Maria Adams, 1859 to Jane Gould, 1863 to Jane Ann Huff
Father's noteclergyman, Methodist; brother-in-law of Mary Electa Adams, through first wife
Mother's nameJane C Gould
Life dates of motherc1827, Bath, England - c1862; m. 1859
Mother's noteDaughter of John and Sarah Gould
Biographical referencesWOMAN'S WHO'S WHO OF AMERICA (1914-15); 1861 Census of Canada; 1871 Census of Canada; 1891 Census of Canada; 1901 Census of Canada; 1911 Census of Canada
Bibliographic referencesWatters, CHECKLIST OF CANADIAN LITERATURE...1620-1960 (1970), pp. 46, 264
Research referencescomplete
Archival referencesHelena Coleman papers (8 boxes), Pratt Library, Victoria University; several letters to Elsie Pomeroy, Elsie Pomeroy Papers, Mount Allison University Archives; correspondence and papers, Lorne and Edith Pierce collection, Queen's University Archives
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.