Virna Sheard

Virginia Sheard (April 24, 1862 – February 22, 1943) was a Canadian poet and novelist. She also wrote under the name Stanton Sheard.[1]

Virna Sheard
BornVirginia Stanton
(1862-04-24)April 24, 1862
Cobourg, Ontario
DiedFebruary 22, 1943(1943-02-22) (aged 80)
Toronto, Ontario
Pen nameStanton Sheard
OccupationWriter (novelist)
NationalityCanadian
Period20th century
Genrefiction, poetry
SpouseCharles Sheard

Early life

Sheard was born in Cobourg, Ontario, the daughter of Elizabeth Butler and Eldridge Stanton, a photographer. Eldridge was a descendant of United Empire Loyalists.[2] The family moved soon after to Toronto where she was raised.[1] Her brother Eldridge Stanton Jr. and his wife both died at Niagara Falls, in the Ice Bridge Disaster of 1912.[3]

Career

Sheard began publishing her poems and stories in magazines around 1898. She wrote her first books, Trevelyan's Little Daughters (1898) and A Maid of Many Moods (1902) to entertain her sons.[2] Her adult fiction was written mainly in the romance genre and included, By the Queen's Grace (1904; a romance set in Elizabethan London), The Man at Lone Lake (1912), The Golden Apple Tree (1920), Below the Salt (1936), and Leaves in the Wind (1938). Below the Salt is a melodramatic story of Marcus O'Sullivan, a wealthy Ontario farmer.[2]

She wrote five volumes of poetry, mainly with religious themes. Some of these included The Miracle and Other Poems (1913), Carry On! (1917), The Ballad of the Quest (1922), Candle Flame (1926), and Fairy Doors (1932).[4] She collected what she thought were her best in Leaves in the Wind, (1938).[5]

Her poem "The Young Knights", which opens with the lines "Now they remain to us forever young / Who with such splendour gave their youth away", is often cited among Canadian women's literary responses to World War I.[6][7] Of her novel By the Queen's Grace, one reviewer wrote: "It is highly romantic (which is important) and highly improbable (which is of no consequence), and readers of 17 or 70 will find it equally to their taste."[8]

Works
  • Trevelyan's Little Daughters, (1898)
  • A Maid Of Many Moods, (1902)
  • By The Queen's Grace, (1904)
  • The Man At Lone Lake, (1912)
  • The Miracle And Other Poems, (1913)
  • Carry On!, (1917)
  • The Golden Apple Tree, (1920)
  • The Ballad Of The Quest, (1922)
  • Candle Flame, (1926)
  • Fortune Turns Her Wheel, (1929)
  • Fairy Doors, (1932)
  • Below The Salt, (1936)
  • Leaves In The Wind, (1938)

Source: [9]

Personal life

She married Dr. Charles Sheard in 1884. Her husband's father had been mayor of Toronto, and her husband was Toronto's first Chief Medical Officer; he also served in the Canadian Parliament from 1917 to 1925. Virna and Charles Sheard had four sons, Charles (1886-1947), Paul (1888-1942), Joseph (1891-1954), and Terence (1898-1985).[10] Sheard was widowed in 1929, and died in 1943, aged 81 years.[11] Her papers were destroyed by her family after her death, apparently because they disapproved of her literary work.[12]

The Sheard family's Toronto house, where Virna Sheard lived for much of her adulthood, was destroyed in a fire in 2016.[13]

References
  1. Albert Moritz; Theresa Moritz, eds. (1987). Oxford Illustrated Literary Guide to Canada. Oxford University Press. p. 114.
  2. New, W.H., ed. (1990). Canadian Writers 1890-1920. Detroit: Gale Research.
  3. Zavitz, Sherman (February 4, 2012). "Niagara Falls Ice Bridge Tragedy – 100 Years Later". Niagara Falls Review. Archived from the original on December 25, 2017.
  4. Garvin, John William, ed. (1916). Canadian Poets and Poetry. McClelland, Goodchild & Stewart. pp. 451–458.
  5. New, W.H., ed. (2002). Encyclopedia of Literature in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
  6. Banerjee, Argha (2016). "Chapter 17. Memory and Remembrance: Women's Elegies of the First World War". In Maazaoui, Abbes (ed.). The Arts of Memory and the Poetics of Remembering. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ISBN 978-1-443-89918-5.
  7. Garvin, John William, ed. (1918). Canadian Poems of the Great War. McClelland & Stewart. pp. 219–224. Virna Sheard.
  8. Kerfoot, J. B. (October 26, 1905). "The Latest Books". Life. p. 492.
  9. "Author - Virna Sheard, née Stanton". Author and Book Info.
  10. "Terence Sheard Bereaved of Mother". Ottawa Journal. February 23, 1943. p. 11.
  11. "Virna Sheard". Simon Frasier University Library, Canada's Early Women Writers, SFU Digital Collections.
  12. Kadar, Marlene (2006). Working in Women's Archives: Researching Women's Private Literature and Archival Documents. Wilfrid Laurier University Press. p. 13. ISBN 9780889208711.
  13. "Fire destroys Jarvis Street heritage home once owned by prominent Toronto family". Toronto: CBC News. January 4, 2016.
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