Digital Victorian Periodical Poetry

Poet and children’s writer. Born in Chatham, Kent, and lived in Kensington, London, with her parents, while also periodically visiting her grandparents in Cottingham, Yorkshire. Her father was a Royal Marine captain. Died unmarried in East Preston, West Sussex. Participated in competitions organized by Kind Words for Boys and Girls (1878-1881), placed advice essays in the Girls’ Own Paper. Published extensive children’s fiction in the 1920s until her death in 1932, as well as several volumes of poetry (such as Whispers of Time [1930]). The Chambers’s Journal ledger entries for her poems refer to her as Miss Usher, and give her address as Westhall, Whitburn, Sunderland (for poem published on 5 July 1884; NLS Dep 341/369) and 51 Blenheim Cresc, Nottinghill, W. (for poems published on 6 December 1884 and 27 January 1894; NLS Dep 341/369, 371 — her parents’ address). Biographical information: Nora Christina Ann Usher, Ancestry; Family Search; Lee Atkins, Encounters in the English Juvenile Periodical Press: The Reader-Responses of Boys and Girls, c.1855-1900, Ph.D. thesis, University of Liverpool, 2019, p. 109. (AC)