Annie Bertha Lawrence

Berta Lawrence ( - )
Maiden name
Buckingham

Works in our collections

Short biography

An author, poet, and historian of the West Country, particularly Somerset and Exmoor.

Full biography

Lawrence was educated Aylesbury Grammar School, before reading  English and French at university. She lectured in English at the University of Clermont Ferrand. She also taught in local French schools, where set met her busnad. They married in 1932 and moved to Wembdon just outside Bridgwater. Lawrence taught French at the Girls’ Grammar School at Bridgwater and English at the French Convent in Langport.

Whilst she had small children, Lawrence began to write stories and verses for the journal Child Education and over the next two decades they published over a hundred of her poems. Frok the 1940s, she increasingly drew on West Country characters and themes for articles in journals such as The Guardian, The Countryman, Western Morning News, South West Catholic History, Somerset and West Dorset Life. She also wrote specialist papers on the Coleridge circle, including Humphrey Davey, Robert Southey and John Chubb.

The first of her eight books was A Somerset Journal (1951). She authored several books on the Quantocks: Quantock Country (1952) and The Nightingale in the Branches (1955). She contributed many poems and essays to the Exmoor Review between 1967 and 1997.

Date of birth (approx)
c. 1906
Date of death (approx)
c. 2003
Collection (people)
Occupations