Wilson, Ethel (1888–1980)

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Wilson, Ethel (1888–1980)

South African-born Canadian novelist and short-story writer . Born Ethel Bryant in 1888 in Port Elizabeth, South Africa; died in 1980; educated in private school in Vancouver, Canada, and Trinity Hall in Southport, England; took the junior exams to enter Cambridge; received a teaching certificate in Vancouver; married a physician, in 1921.

Selected writings:

Hetty Dorval (1947); The Innocent Traveller (1949); The Equation of Love (1952); The Swamp Angel (1954); Love and Saltwater (1956); Mrs. Golightly and Other Stories (1961).

Ethel Wilson was born Ethel Bryant in 1888 in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. When her mother died two years later, Ethel and her father returned to England, where they lived until his death in 1898. Wilson then traveled to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, to live with her maternal grandmother. She was educated in a Vancouver private school. Later, she resided at Trinity Hall, a boarding school in Southport, England, where she completed junior exams to enter Cambridge University. However, instead of attending Cambridge, she returned to Vancouver and earned a teaching certificate.

Wilson's teaching career lasted until she married her husband in 1921. This was the start of a long and happy period in her life. While her husband, a physician, made housecalls, Ethel waited in the car and wrote short stories. The couple traveled extensively, so Wilson's fiction features settings from around the world. Her first published writings appeared in The New Statesman and Nation in 1937. In 1947, Hetty Dorval, Wilson's premiere novel, was accepted for publication, and successfully established her reputation as a writer. Her next novel, The Innocent Traveller (1949), was a family saga. In 1952, two novellas were released under the title The Equation of Love.

Wilson's books feature the theme of deceptive appearances. Her characters, often ambivalent and unpredictable, are best represented in the novel The Swamp Angel (1954), which is considered her finest work. She also wrote Love and Saltwater (1956) and Mrs. Golightly and Other Stories (1961). Following Wilson's death in 1980, her life and work were commemorated in Ethel Wilson: Stories, Essays, and Letters.