Robin Hyde

Robin Hyde

About Robin Hyde

Robin Hyde, pen name of Iris Guiver Wilkinson, (1906 - 1939), was a New Zealand writer and journalist. In 1929, Hyde published her first collection of poems, "The Desolate Star". Between 1935 and 1938, she published five novels: "Passport to Hell" (1936), "Check to Your King" (1936), "Wednesday's Children" (1937), "Nor the Years Condemned" (1938), and "The Godwits Fly" (1938). A manuscript of her unpublished autobiography was donated to the Auckland libraries by Gilbert Tothill. Her writings bear witness to a struggle for a better life for women and M?ori people.
Robin Hyde's extraordinary but short life included a precocious early career as poet and parliamentary reporter. As a journalist, she juggled writing for the social pages with highly political reporting on unemployment, prison conditions and the alienation of Maori land. She struggled with drug addiction and depression, single motherhood twice over, and a lengthy period as a voluntary patient in a residential clinic (The Lodge) attached to Auckland Mental Hospital in Avondale. Her life culminated in brilliant reporting on the Sino/Japanese War following a journey into China in 1938.

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