The Wind Our Enemy (1939), Anne Marriott's first published volume, was described by Desmond Pacey as "a more incisive long poem than had appeared in Canada since [E. J.] Pratt's early 'Cachalot.' ..." In the 1940s Marriott produced three further volumes of poems. One of them, Calling Adventurers! (1941), won a Governor General's Award for 1941. But there followed twenty-five years during which she published only occasional poems and short stories, and she seemed destined to be regarded as a writer whose reputation would rest on the historical importance of her early work. In the 1980s, however, Marriott's writing once more began to appear in print, in the form of a substantial number of new poems and a collection of short stories.

The daughter of Edward Guy Marriott, a civil engineer, and his wife, Catherine Heley Marriott, Joyce Anne Marriott was born in Victoria and attended private schools there. She was...