An active and congenial member of the Canadian literary community for more than fifty years, Agnes Ethelwyn Wetherald was best known for her journalism and poetry which appeared in many Canadian and American newspapers and periodicals. Professionally and in private life she associated and corresponded with some of the leading literary figures of the 1890s, including Wilfred Campbell, Edward William Thomson and Duncan Campbell Scott; today her name is scarcely remembered, and her only work to have been recently republished is, ironically, the one she least wanted to preserve.

Raised as a member of the Society of Friends, Agnes Ethelwyn Wetherald was born in Rockwood, Ontario, the sixth of the eleven children of William Wetherald and Jemima Harris Balls Wetherald. When she was seven her father, founder and principal of Rockwood Academy, became superintendent of Haverford College, near Philadelphia; a few years later the family moved to a...