About Agnes Maule Machar
Agnes Maule Machar was a poet, writer, and social reformer, born on January 23, 1837, in Kingston, Upper Canada, and died unmarried in that city on January 24, 1927. Living in a small town, Agnes Maule Machar had time, energy, and insight, and she used them to seize the opportunities that came her way. The list of her writings is impressive. From childhood, she published under the guise of anonymity. Her first book, memories related to a janitor at Queen's College, was published in 1859. The last 30 years of the century were her most prolific period. We can say that her career really took off with Katie Johnstone's Cross: A Canadian Tale, because this novel, published in Toronto in 1870, won an award. Often under the pseudonym Fidelis, she then composed a tribute to her father, at least eight novels, and a multitude of poems and essays. Alone or in collaboration, she wrote, among other things, six history books for the general public. Her poems appeared in American, British, and Canadian periodicals. A selection of her verses was published in London and Toronto in 1899 under the title Lays of the "True North", and other Canadian poems. Patriotic and imperialist themes are found quite frequently in her poems, but the beautiful nature that surrounded Ferncliff, a source of joy for her, was her main inspiration. In Canada, generations of schoolchildren were introduced to her poetry through their reading textbooks. This form of dissemination, the prizes won by her poems and novels, and the numerous reprints of her writings – and her historical works – attest to the extent to which her work corresponded to the sensibilities of her contemporaries. Many of her essays have stood the test of time. The texts she published from 1872 to 1882 in Canada's largest journal of ideas, the Canadian Monthly and National Review/Rose-Belford's Canadian Monthly and National Review, and in the Toronto Week from 1883 to 1896 offer the best sample of her areas of interest.Browse all poems and texts published on Agnes Maule Machar
