| Main entry | Wetherald, Agnes Ethelwyn |
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| Birth place | Rockwood, Ontario |
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| Birth date | 26 April 1857 |
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| Death place | Pelham Township, Ontario |
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| Death date | 9 March 1940 |
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| Identifier | 0443 |
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| Birth name | Agnes Ethelwyn Wetherald |
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| Alternate names | Bel Thistlethwaite |
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| Marital status | single |
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| Religious affiliation | Quaker |
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| Paid work | journalist; editor |
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| Biography | Known for her journalism and poetry, Agnes Ethelwyn Wetherald (1857-1940) was born into a Quaker family in Rockwood, Ontario, the sixth of eleven children. At the age of seven she moved with her family to Philadelphia, where her father was superintendent of Haverford College, and later to a fruit and dairy farm at Chantler, near Fenwick on the Niagara Peninsula, where he became a Quaker minister. Here, Ethelwyn spent the majority of her life. She was educated at the Friends Boarding School in Union Springs, New York, and at Pickering College in Ontario. Her first poem was published when she was seventeen, in ST. NICHOLAS MAGAZINE, followed by stories in ROSE-BELFORD'S CANADIAN MONTHLY from 1880 to 1882. Her journalistic career began in earnest in 1886, when she began to use the pen name "Bel Thistlethwaite" for her essays and sketches in the TORONTO GLOBE, a pseudonym originating with the maiden name of her paternal grandmother. She also became a regular contributor to the WEEK over the next three years, which published her poetry and a series of articles on Canadian literary women. During this time she collaborated with Graeme Mercer Adam on her only extensive work of fiction, AN ALGONQUIN MAIDEN (1886), a historical romance that later became an embarrassment on account of its sentimental portrayal of Aboriginal life. At the invitation of John Cameron, Ethelwyn moved to London, Ontario in 1889 to write for the LONDON ADVERTISER and for the feminist monthly WIVES AND DAUGHTERS. Over the following years she became a prolific contributor to various North American periodicals; her many poems in the YOUTH'S COMPANION (Boston) became the basis of her first book of poetry, THE HOUSE OF THE TREES (1895). In 1895-1896 she went on to become editorial assistant on the LADIES' HOME JOURNAL and then worked with Charles Dudley Warner and Forrest Morgan on A LIBRARY OF THE WORLD'S BEST LITERATURE, possibly moving to Hartford, Connecticut for this position. After living for several years in St. Paul she returned to Fenwick and her family's farm. Here she found new inspiration for her writing, and produced three books of poetry in the first decade of the twentieth century. Remaining unmarried, she adopted a young girl named Dorothy (1911-), who later went on to publish her own compilation of memories of Ethelwyn's life. In addition to writing an introduction to COLLECTED POEMS (1905) by Isabella Valancy Crawford,* Ethelwyn was friends with many literary figures such as Laura Durand*, Helena Coleman,* and Marjorie Pickthall.* Ethelwyn died in 1940, just short of her eighty-third birthday, and was buried in Pelham. |
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| Other notes | Daughter, Dorothy Wetherald Rungeling, was a pioneer in women's aviation. She has recently published LIFE AND WORKS OF ETHELWYN WETHERALD, 1857-1940: WITH A SELECTION OF HER POEMS AND ARTICLES (2004). |
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| Residences | Rockwood, Ontario (1857-1864); Philadelphia (1864-1866); Chantler, near Fenwick (Pelham Township), Niagara Peninsula, Ontario (1866); Union Springs, New York (1870); Pelham, Ontario (1871-1881); St. Paul, Minnesota (1885); London, Ontario (1889); Pelham (1891); Philadelphia (1895-96); Pelham (1911) |
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| Geographic regions | Ontario; USA |
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| Primary genres | poetry; non-fiction; journalism |
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| Books | AN ALGONQUIN MAIDEN: A ROMANCE OF THE EARLY DAYS OF UPPER CANADA (1886) with Graeme Mercer Adam; THE HOUSE OF THE TREES AND OTHER POEMS (1895); TANGLED IN STARS (1902); THE GARDEN OF THE HEART: A GARLAND OF VERSES (1903) with Edith Thomas, Harriet Prescott Spofford and others; THE RADIANT ROAD (1904); THE LAST ROBIN: LYRICS AND SONNETS (1907); TREE-TOP MORNINGS (1921); LYRICS AND SONNETS (1931) |
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| Periodicals | THE CHAP-BOOK; CHRISTIAN UNION; CURRENT (Chicago); DETROIT FREE PRESS; HARPER'S WEEKLY; LADIES' HOME JOURNAL (Toronto); LONDON ADVERTISER; MAGAZINE OF POETRY; OUTLOOK; ROSE-BELFORD'S CANADIAN MONTHLY; SATURDAY NIGHT; SCRIBNER'S; ST. NICHOLAS MAGAZINE; TORONTO GLOBE; THE WEEK; WOMAN'S JOURNAL; WIVES AND DAUGHTERS; YOUTH'S COMPANION |
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| Other publications | Anthologized 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 (1902, 1919, 1925); French, STANDARD CANADIAN RECITER (1918); Garvin, CANADIAN POETS (1916; 1926); Garvin, CANADIAN VERSE FOR BOYS AND GIRLS (1930); Garvin, CAP AND BELLS (1936); Gustafson, ANTHOLOGY OF CANADIAN POETRY (1942); Harrison, CANADIAN BIRTHDAY BOOK (1887); Lockhart, THE HARP OF ACADIA (1923); Morrison, MASTERPIECES OF RELIGIOUS VERSE (1948); Rand, TREASURY OF CANADIAN VERSE (1900); Stedman, A VICTORIAN ANTHOLOGY, 1837-1895 (1895); Stephen, GOLDEN TREASURY OF CANADIAN VERSE (1928); Stephen, VOICES OF CANADA (1926); Wetherall, LATER CANADIAN POEMS (1893) |
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| Father's name | William Wetherald |
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| Life dates of father | 26 September 1820, Healaugh, Yorkshire, England - 21 August 1898, Banbury, England; m. 1846 |
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| Father's note | came to Canada with family in 1835; teacher; founder and principal of Rockwood Academy; superintendent of Haverford College (near Philadelphia); Quaker minister; member of Society of Friends |
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| Mother's name | Jemima Harris Balls |
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| Life dates of mother | 3 March 1830, Rockwood, Ontario - 31 October 1908, Welland, Ontario; m. 1846 |
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| Children number | 1 adopted daughter |
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| Children's names and dates | Dorothy (12 May 1911 - ), m. Charles Rungeling |
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| Biographical references | Dictionary of Literary Biography 99; Moulton, THE MAGAZINE OF POETRY, VOL. 2 (1890); Garvin, CANADIAN POETS (1916), pp. 167-176 |
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| Bibliographic references | Watters, CHECKLIST OF CANADIAN LITERATURE...1620-1960 (1970), pp. 208, 416 |
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| Research references | complete |
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| Archival references | correspondence, clippings, and publications, Agnes Ethelwyn Wetherald fonds, Brock University Archives; correspondence, Queen's University Archives; correspondence, M.O. Hammond Papers, Archives of Ontario, Toronto; correspondence with E.W. Thomson, John Willison, Andrew Macphail, and Duncan Campbell Scott, National Archives of Canada; correspondence, W.D. Lighthall, McGill University; letters, Newton McTavish papers, North York Public Library; letters, Margaret Cowie fonds, Rare Books and Special Collections, University of British Columbia |
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| Image credits | Image from John. W. Garvin, ed., CANADIAN POETS (2nd ed., Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1926). |
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| Copyright | This 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. |
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