Sheila Wingfield (1906–1992)

Sheila Beddington was the daughter of a patrician Anglo-Irish Protestant mother and a wealthy Anglo-Jewish father. Her father's family took a new name en masse from a Surrey village, making them sound completely English. Her grandfather had been born Alfred Henry Moses, and her cousins included Violet Schiff and Ada Leverson. She had a privileged upbringing in London and spent summers and holidays at her mother's family's estates in County Offaly, Ireland. Her mother moved in artistic and literary circles with W.B. Yeats and George Bernard Shaw. Sheila became a debutante and briefly attended art school in Paris. In 1932, she married Hon. Mervyn Patrick Wingfield, later 9th Viscount Powerscourt, with whom she had three children. They lived at the Powerscourt Estate near Enniskerry in County Wicklow, which she helped to modernize. As Sheila Wingfield, Lady Powerscourt, she led a colorful life, was passionately committed to her poetry, and had a complex relationship with her Jewish identity. Her first verses appeared in Dublin Magazine, and her work attracted praise from such figures as John Betjeman and T.S. Eliot. Her most prolific writing period was during World War II. In addition to poetry, she published the autobiographical works Real People (1952) and Sun Too Fast (1974).