During her short life Elizabeth Myers wrote numerous short stories and three novels, A Well Full of Leaves (1943), The Basilisk of St James’s (1945), and Mrs Christopher (1946).
Elizabeth Myers was born on 23 December 1912 at 3, Apollo Street, Manchester. Her parents, George William Myers, a Manchester warehouseman [a wholesaler of linen and cloth made in the factories surrounding Manchester], son of James Myers, a rag dealer, and Elizabeth Hickey, a domestic servant, daughter of John Hickey, shoemaker, had married on 8 April 1912 at St Michael’s Roman Catholic church in Manchester.
By 1921, the family, including Elizabeth’s younger sister Dorothy Lilian Myers (born 14 April 1915), were living at 10, Apollo Street, Livesey Street, Manchester.
Elizabeth left school at the age of 14 and moved to London where she worked as a secretary in Fleet Street and began writing short stories for newspapers and magazines. While living in London she became friends with fellow authors Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965) and Arthur Waugh (1866-1943).
Elizabeth suffered from tuberculosis and, when the 1939 register was taken, she was a patient at the Grove Park Hospital in Lewisham, giving as her occupation ‘waitress’.
On 7 October 1943, Elizabeth was married at St Mary’s Roman Catholic church, Hampstead to the widower Littleton Charles Powys (1874-1955), the former headmaster of Sherborne Preparatory School, to whom she had been introduced by Arthur Waugh. Their marriage was witnessed by Elizabeth’s mother, Eleanor Farjeon and Oliver Deverell Holt.
From 1925 to 1936 Littleton and his first wife Mabel (1881-1942) lived at the Quarry House in The Avenue, Sherborne, which had been designed for them by Littleton’s architect brother Albert Reginald Powys (1881-1936) and was built using Stalbridge stone and Ham Hill stone, which gave Littleton great pleasure ‘for the stone from Stalbridge came from the home of my grandfather, and the stone from Ham Hill from our old home at Montacute.’
Littleton and Mabel moved out of Quarry House in 1936 when the garden became too much for them and from 1940 lived at Priestlands Cottage where Mabel died on 14 September 1942.
At the start of their married life Elizabeth and Littleton lived at Priestlands Cottage, during which time Elizabeth finished one novel, The Basilisk of St James (London: Chapman & Hall, 1945), which she dedicated ‘With gratitude and love to my husband Littleton C. Powys and my true friend John Cowper Powys’, and wrote another, Mrs Christopher (London: Chapman & Hall, 1946), with she dedicated ‘With love to Walter de la Mare. The most exquisite poet of the age and the kindest of friends’, as well as a number of short stories.
In April 1946, Elizabeth and Littleton moved back to Quarry House in The Avenue, where Elizabeth died of tuberculosis on 24 May 1947, aged 34. She was buried in the Roman Catholic section of Sherborne Cemetery, where the headstone on her grave reads: ‘To the glory of God and in memory of Elizabeth Myers b. Dec 23 1912. d. May 24 1947. For 3 ½ years the beloved wife of Littleton C. Powys. She used her great gifts as a writer for the good of her fellow men. R.I.P.’
Littleton later edited The Letters of Elizabeth Myers (London: Chapman & Hall, 1951) and wrote about their brief time together in his second autobiography, Still the Joy of It (London: Macdonald & Co., 1956).
Throughout her life Elizabeth had been a keen supporter of public libraries, on which she had depended for her self-education. When she moved to Sherborne in 1943 she was surprised that the town did not have a public library. It was not until December 1949 that the first full-time branch of the Dorset County Library was opened in Sherborne at The Julian on The Green. In 1950, Littleton donated 500 of Elizabeth’s books to the Dorset County Library with the proposal that as many of these books as possible should be returned to the Sherborne branch library. In each of the books was an inscription saying that the book had come from Elizabeth’s library ‘because public libraries meant so much to her’.
In 1951, the film Blackmailed, starring Dirk Bogarde, Fay Compton and Robert Flemyng, was based on Elizabeth’s novel Mrs Christopher, which she had written while living in Sherborne.
Littleton left Sherborne in September 1950 and died on 27 September 1955 at St Mary’s Nursing Home, Clifton, Bristol.
In 1957 Eleanor Farjeon published her memoir of Elizabeth Myres, which included copies of letters written to her by Elizabeth and a wood engraving of Elizabeth by Edward Walters.
Elizabeth Myers’ literary archives are held at the Harry Ransom Center
Elizabeth Myers’ grave in Sherborne Cemetery (Find a Grave)
Rachel Hassall