11 Facts About Valentine Ackland

Mary Kathleen Macrory "Molly" Valentine Ackland was born 20 May 1906 at 54 Brook Street, London to Robert Craig Valentine Ackland and Ruth Kathleen.

Valentine Ackland's husband had agreed to adopt the child but she had a miscarriage and she was determined to end the marriage.

Valentine Ackland began wearing men's clothing, cut her hair in a short style called the Eton crop, and was at times mistaken for a handsome young boy.

Valentine Ackland changed her name to the androgynous Valentine Ackland in the late 1920s when she decided to become a serious poet.

Valentine Ackland's poetry appeared in British and American literary journals during the 1920s to the 1940s, but Ackland deeply regretted that she never became a more widely read poet.

In 1930, Valentine Ackland was introduced to the short story writer and novelist Sylvia Townsend Warner, with whom she would maintain a lifelong relationship, albeit tumultuous at times given Valentine Ackland's infidelities and increasing alcoholism.

Valentine Ackland was responsible for involving Warner in the Communist Party, which both joined in 1934.

Valentine Ackland was struggling with additional doubts and conflicts during this period as well.

Valentine Ackland continued to battle her alcoholism, and she was undergoing shifts in her political and religious alliances.

Valentine Ackland died at her home in Maiden Newton, Dorset, on 9 November 1969 from breast cancer that had metastasised to her lungs.

Valentine Ackland cites as examples Ackland's focus on optimism and dread, the longing for emotional closeness and the fear of intimacy, self-assertion and self-negation, the search for privacy and solitude amidst the longing for connection and social acceptance as a lesbian and as a noteworthy poet.