Robin Hyde

Robin Hyde was born Iris Wilkinson in South Africa in 1906, the second of four daughters. Shortly after her birth, the family moved to New Zealand where they settled in Wellington.

Iris began writing at an early age and became a journalist at seventeen, when she joined The Dominion. Under the pen-name Robin Hyde, she published her first book of poetry, The Desolate Star, in 1929. Her first prose work, an account of her life in journalism entitled Journalese, appeared in 1934. Between 1935 and 1938 she published five novels: Passport to Hell (1936), Check to Your King (1936), Wednesday’s Children (1937), Nor the Years Condemn (1938), and The Godwits Fly (1938).

Hyde is also known as one of New Zealand’s major twentieth-century poets. Books include The Conquerors (1935), Persephone phone in Winter (1937), and Houses by the Sea (1952), a posthumous collection edited by Gloria Rawlinson. A Selected Poems was published in 1984.

In January 1983 Hyde left New Zealand for England, planning to travel via the trans-Siberian railway and write a book about her experiences. In Hong Kong she decided to visit China, then in turmoil and resisting the invading Japanese. The book Dragon Rampant, the only account by a woman journalist from the front-line and a plea for the world to take notice of what was happening in China, was published shortly before her death in England in 1939.