Monica Baldwin

Monica Baldwin ( - )
Short biography

An author and former canonness. Born in Stourport in 1893, Baldwin entered an enclosed order of Augustinian canonesses in 1914. In 1941, after 28 years, she left the order to live in a cottage at bottom of Flagstaff Cottage, Lamorna, the family home of Samual Lamorna Birch and his daughter Elizabeth Lamorna Birch.

Full biography

Here she met the artists and inhabitants of Lamorna, including Ithell Colquhoun, who recorded their meeting in her own memoir of Lamorna. Having given Baldwin a copy of her novel Goose of Hermogenes, Colquhoun reported Baldwin's shock at its contents, a shock from which their continued friendship apparently never quite recovered. Baldwin wrote an autobiography as well as several novels. By the 1960s, she had moved away to the Channel Islands. She committed suicide in a nursing home in 1975.

Works in our collections

Date of birth
22 February 1893
Place of birth
Stourport, Worcester
Date of death
17 November 1975
Place of death
Long Melford, Suffolk
Collection (people)
Occupations
Relationships
Person (listed)
Relationship
Friend
Person (listed)
Relationship
Friend