The Chesterfield and District LHS think they have identified E G Edwards as Elizabeth Grace Edwards born c.1881/1882 (contemporary of Letts), daughter of Henry Vincent Edwards born in Dublin and Eliza, born in Nottingham; Living at Mackworth, Belper 1891. 1901 and 1911 living at Darley Abbey and in 1939, Elizabeth was a secretary at Overton Hall, Ashover - at that time it was a school. All of the places are in Derbyshire.
Strangely, none of those places/names ring any bells for me!
Happy Christmas to you Jeffrey and thanks for your help and interest.I'm sure your 1st prize was well deserved!
Bairbre
I've looked at some of her poetry online and I can see why it would appeal to composers as texts for songs.
I've heard of Ina Boyle but can't quite think under what circumstances just at the moment.
As for Maurice Jacobson, he was an examiner for a piano class I competed in at a music festival when I was at school. I won the first prize but the competition wasn't up to much !
Jacobson set Francis Thompson's Hound of Heaven as a choral/orchestral work and I heard it broadcast many years ago. I wonder if recorded copies of the broadcast survive anywhere ?
Yes indeed he did, Jeffrey - he set at least fifteen of her poems to music, and Ina Boyle, Charles Wood, Ivor Gurney (under the pseudonym Michael (Raphoe) Flood), Maurice Jacobson, C. Alison Compton, Rhoda Coghill, Edward Bairstow, Haldane Campbell Stewart, Dorothy Parke and Christopher à Becket Williams also did settings of her poems - now I add M G Truman to that list. Although Stanford seems to get most of the credit, Ina Boyle (an almost-forgotten-until-recently Irish composer) set 'A Soft Day, Thank God' to music in 1912 ahead of Stanford's 'A Soft Day'.
Forgive me if you already know this but the prolific Charles Villiers Stanford set some of her poetry as solo songs.
IMSLP has one set, "A Sheaf of Songs from Leinster" op.140, online:
https://imslp.org/wiki/Category:Stanford%2C_Charles_Villiers
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