Saturday 18 March 2017

Query regarding Maud Anna Bell (?1861 - 1947?)

I received an interesting query recently about the WW1 poet Maud Anna Bell and wondered whether anyone could help:

“As Maud Anna Bell was working for the Serbian Relief Fund, I'm interested to know if Maud ever went to the Front through her work.


I also found the poem 'Crocuses at Nottingham' attributed to a Miss Jessie Bell in “The Times” from 1917, so was wondering what had happened there.”


During the course of my previous research about Maud Anna Bell, I noticed that Catherine W. Reilly mentions her In the WW1 poetry anthology “Scars upon my heart”, saying that Bell “campaigned actively for the Serbian Relief Fund".  I have not been able to find any further information as to whether Bell actually travelled to Serbia.

Maud Anna Bell is also included by Catherine W. Reilly in her “English Poetry of the First World War A Bibliography (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1978), on page 52, as having poems included in two WW1 anthologies:


“A Treasury of War Poetry:  British and American poems of the World War, 1914 – 1919” (Boston, Mass., Houghton Mifflin, 1919, edited by George Herbert Clarke


And


“A Treasury of War Poetry:  British and American poems of the World War, 1914 – 1919” (Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1919) – in both these the title of the poem is “From a Trench”.


Immediately above the entry for Maud Anna Bell is an entry for a Maud Bell who published a WW1 collection of poems entitled “London songs and others (poems)” (Bristol, Horseshoe Publishing Company, 1924.   Could this be the same person?


Following up one lead regarding the Serbian Relief Fund, I began to look at The Church League for Women's Suffrage and came across this very well researched and written site which gives a great deal of information about some wonderfully inspirational women:


Details on the Church League for Women's Suffrage - http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Wchurch.htm


Maud's poem appeared in “The Times” as by "M. B. H." according to Carrie Ellen Holman's anthology, the “Day of Battle: Poems of the Great War” (Toronto, 1918), but it could have been misread.

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=vFjYECMj5k4C&pg=PA14&lpg=PA14&dq=the+serbian+relief+fund&source=bl&ots=2V1sSQPGxh&sig=Z7O46DHFz2unRVBRNczN2TOmsg8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ySv2UsyZFqiv7AaC_IGQDQ&ved=0CFYQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=the%20serbian%20relief%20fund&f=false


Has anyone any further information about Maud Anna Bell please?