Robin Hyde

Iris Wilkinson (1906 - 1939) was born in South Africa but her family moved to Wellington when she was only a month old. She attended Wellington Girls College and wrote for the school magazine between 1919 and 1922. The quality of her original writing was recognised early on and she became known as "the schoolgirl poetess" in local media. On leaving school she started writing for The Dominion but had to resign to have a knee operation. The surgery was badly performed and it left her with a pronounced limp. The opiates she was prescribed to relieve her chronic pain soon became a dependency which was to follow her for the rest of her life. She returned to work but discovered she had become pregnant after having a brief love affair.  She traveled to Sydney and gave birth to a still-born son she named Robin Hyde, then adopted the name herself to use for her serious published work. On returning to New Zealand she suffered a nervous breakdown but recovered, returned to journalism and had her first collection of poetry published in 1929. Hyde again fell pregnant and gave birth to a son who was later fostered out. She became “lady editor” of the New Zealand Observer but depression caused by living in virtual poverty and the temptations of morphine proved too great and she attempted suicide in mid-1933. She moved to the Grey Lodge of Auckland Mental Hospital as a voluntary patient. During the four years she lived at the lodge she completed three novels, two collections of poetry and drafted her best known works, The Godwits Fly and Nor the Years Condemn. In early 1938 Hyde decided to travel to England for an O.E. and to meet her publishers. However a stop-over in Hong Kong exposed her to the crisis developing in neighbouring China following its invasion by Japan. She travelled into the war zone and many articles emerged from her experiences. Hyde eventually reached England in September 1938 but was repeatedly hospitalised with mental and physical illnesses. As war in Europe grew imminent, government assistance was secured to bring her back to New Zealand. On 23 August 1939, the New Zealand High Commissioner arrived at her London bed-sit to confirm travel arrangements. He found she had taken her life earlier that day with a drug overdose. She was 33.

See the link to the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography below for further information.