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Born Iris Guiver Wilkinson in Cape Town, South Africa in 1906, Robin Hyde immigrated to Wellington with her English father and Australian mother before her first birthday. The poverty and contentious relationship of her parents shaped and informed her novel The godwits fly (1938). Though critical of her time at Wellington Girls College in her reminiscences, her writing was encouraged and over 20 poems and short stories were published in the school magazine. The 17 year old “schoolgirl poetess” continued her prodigious output, writing for both the Dominion and the New Zealand Farmer’s Advocate.

In 1925 series of unfortunate events unfolded for Iris, her lover Harry Sweetman left for England while she recovering from a knee operation that would leave her lame and dependant on opiates for relief. She would find out later that Sweetman had died shortly after his arrival in England. While recuperating at Rotorua, Hyde met Frederick de Mulford Hyde. When Iris fell pregnant, Frederick began to withdraw his affection. To hide the unmarried pregnancy, Frederick and Iris moved to Sydney. Under unclear circumstances, Iris’s son, Christopher Robin Hyde died shortly after birth in 1926. From this point on, Iris Wilkinson began to use Robin Hyde as a pen name and the name that she would become more commonly known by.

For a while Hyde lived precariously as a freelance journalist, struggling to support both her chemical dependency and her second child, Derek Challis. These pressures, along with the stresses that came out of her involvement with a politicised circle of friends, led to a suicide attempt. Following the loss of her job and arrest, Hyde was transferred to the Grey Lodge at the Auckland Mental Hospital. The respite at Grey was a blessing for Hyde, supported by friends and mentors; Hyde’s output was prolific for the next three years, with 2 published novels, a number of drafts and over 120 poetic works published. After these success’s, Hyde was feeling confident and wished for increased independence. On the eve of her 32nd birthday, Hyde and her 7 year old son set out for England, by way of Japan, planning to connect with Europe via the Trans-Siberian railway. A stop-over in Hong Kong delayed Hyde as a mesmerising new world opened up to Hyde. Hyde was captivated by the history and the plight of the Chinese in the wake of the Sino-Japanese War. From her experiences in China, Hyde wrote a number of articles, poems and the travel book Dragon rampant.

With the decline of her health and finances, Hyde’s Chinese detour came to an end. She arrived in Southampton in September 1938. Living out of a caravan in Kent, Hyde’s mental and physical health deteriorated. On the 23rd of August 1939, with the worsening international situation in Europe, the High Commissioner of New Zealand went to pay a visit Hyde to organise her return to New Zealand. He found her dead of a benzedrine overdose.

This record comes from the 1993 Suffrage Centennial Year Trust Posters series, which are a part of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs holdings. The caption reads “Poet, novelist and journalist, Robin Hyde was a ‘fighter with words’. Where Hyde saw injustice, she used words to battle for women’s rights and for Maori dispossessed of their land. Suffering poverty and ill-health throughout her short lifetime, she wrote some of her best work as a war correspondent in China, where she encountered chauvinism and brutality.”

Reference: [ABKH 7365 W4437 98/NF317 (R17048556)]

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