Nora Chesson (2 January 1871 – 14 April 1906) was an English journalist and poet. She won for herself a distinct celebrity as a contributor to most of the English periodicals and newspapers of her time.[1]

A portrait of a white woman with dark hair, wearing a printed garment.
Nora Hopper Chesson, from a 1906 publication
Nora Hopper - Under Quicken Boughs

Biography

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Eleanor Jane Hopper was born in Exeter, on 2 January 1871.[2][3] Her father, Capt. Harman Baillie Hopper, was Irish. She was a participant in the Irish literary movement of the 1890s, having some influence on W. B. Yeats in particular with her Ballads in Prose (1894).

Her career as an author of poetry and prose began in 1887 when she was not quite seventeen years of age. She went on to increase her literary reputation until her death. In some of her poems, there was an atmosphere of melancholy which might seem as if it cast upon them the shadow of a too-early death.[1] She provided the English translation to Thadgh O'Donoghue's libretto for the Irish opera Muirgheis (1903) by Thomas O'Brien Butler (1861–1915).

In 1901, she married the English man of letters Wilfrid Hugh Chesson (1870–1953). She died from heart failure at her home in North Sheen on 14 April 1906.[2][3] Five volumes of her selected poems were published that year by Alston Rivers, of London,[1] which included a short biographical note by the editor, her husband, and an introductory appreciation by Ford Madox Hueffer.[4]

References

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Bibliography

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  •   This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: Bacon, Leonard; Thompson, Joseph Parrish; Storrs, Richard Salter (1906). The Independent. Vol. 61 (Public domain ed.). Independent Publications, incorporated.
  •   This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: John W. Parker and Son (1906). The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art. Vol. 102 (Public domain ed.). John W. Parker and Son.
  • "A Clever Authoress". The Western Times. Exeter, Devon. 19 April 1906. p. 2. Retrieved 7 February 2024 – via Newspapers.com.
  • Gould, Warwick. "Hopper [married name Chesson], Eleanor Jane [Nora]". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/62929. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
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