Digital Victorian Periodical Poetry

Working-class poet, weaver, servant. Pseudonyms: “Effie,” E. W.” Born in Selkirk. Father, Robert Milne, was a ploughman. Limited schooling. The Chambers’s Journal ledger entries for her poems refer to her as “Miss E. Williamson” and give her address as 129 Haliburton Pl, Galashiels (for poems published on 12 July 1879 and 10 November 1883), and The Cascade, Galashiels (for poem published on 10 February 1883) (NLS Dep 341/371, 369, 294). The editorial note to her poem in Chambers’s Journal, “A Summer-Day Reverie” (12 July 1879), terms her “a Scottish ‘mill-girl.’” According to Reilly she was employed as a servant, after she finished working as a weaver, up until her marriage. She also spent several years in Ireland. Author of The Tangled Web: Poems and Hymns (1883), which was published under the name “Effie Williamson, Galashiels” and dedicated “To My Mother’s Memory.” A prefatory note by Williamson terms herself “The Weaver” and adds that her poems were published in American, English, and Scottish periodicals and newspapers such as Chambers’s Journal, The People’s Journal, The Hull Miscellany, and The Border Advertiser. Biographical information: Reilly, Late Victorian Poetry, p. 515; Goodridge. (AC)