author
Kathleen Montgomery Wallace
1890–1958
A British poet and novelist whose work carries the hush of Cambridge streets and the ache left by war. Her writing often blends tenderness, memory, and a clear eye for the places she loved.
1 Audiobook
Lost city : Verses
by Kathleen Montgomery Wallace
About the author
Born Kathleen Montgomery Coates in Cambridge in 1890, she was educated at Girton and first became known as a poet. Her 1918 collection Lost City: Verses is closely tied to the emotional shadow of the First World War, pairing local landscapes with grief, remembrance, and love interrupted.
In 1917 she married Major James Hill Wallace. After the war the couple spent time in Canada and then lived in China until 1927, experiences that later fed into her fiction. An obituary in The Times notes that China and Cambridge together provided the background for much of her writing.
She published her first novel, I Walk Alone, in 1930 and went on to write further novels, biographical fiction, and books for children. Readers remember her for gentle, readable storytelling and for writing that could be moving without ever becoming grand.