Ursula Vaughan Williams
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| Ursula Vaughan Williams | |
| Born | March 15, 1911 Malta |
|---|---|
| Died | October 23, 2007 (aged 96) London |
| Occupation | Poet and author |
Ursula Vaughan Williams, née Joan Ursula Penton Lock (March 15, 1911 – October 23, 2007) was an English poet and author, and biographer of her second husband, the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams.
[edit] Biography
Born in Valletta, Malta, the daughter of Major-General Sir Robert Lock, she began writing poetry in 1921 and her first published collection appeared 1927.
In the early 1930s, she was a student at the Old Vic and in 1933 she married Michael Forrester Wood, an army officer. She met Ralph Vaughan Williams in 1938, after she sent him a play which she had hoped he would set to music. The meeting led eventually to their collaboration on the choral work Epithalamion, and she became a trusted companion of Vaughan Williams and his first wife, Adeline.
On the death of her husband in 1942, Ursula Wood began devoting more time to the Vaughan Williamses and became Ralph's literary advisor. Adeline died in 1951 after a long illness. Ursula Wood became Ralph Vaughan Williams' personal assistant, and they married in February 1953. She was 41 and he was 80. She encouraged her husband to resume the composition he had been forced to set aside during his first wife's illness, writing the libretto to two of his last choral works. Ralph Vaughan Williams died in 1958. Following her second husband's death, Ursula Vaughan Williams set up residence near Regent's Park, London.
In 1964 she published RVW: A Biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams. Her own autobiography, Paradise Remembered, was completed in 1972, but not published until 2002. Additionally, she published four novels and five volumes of poetry and provided libretti for other composers, including Herbert Howells, Malcolm Williamson and Elizabeth Lutyens.
Until her death in London at age 96, she was honorary president of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society. She was also the president of the English Folk Dance and Song Society.
[edit] Bibliography
- The Complete Poems of Ursula Vaughan Williams
- There was a time... A pictorial journey from the collection of Ursula Vaughan Williams
- Paradise Remembered (autobiography)
- The Collected Poems of Ursula Vaughan Williams
