U a fanthorpe biography

English poet (1929–2009)

Ursula Askham FanthorpeCBEFRSL (22 July 1929 – 28 April 2009) was an English poet, who published as U. A. Fanthorpe.

Ua fanthorpe poems atlas

Her poetry comments mainly on social issues.

Life and work

Early years and education

Born in south-east London, Fanthorpe was the daughter of a judge,^[1] or as she put it "middle-class but honest parents".^[2] She was educated at St Catherine's School, Bramley, in Surrey, and at St Anne's College, Oxford, where she "came to life",^[2] receiving a first-classdegree in English language and literature.

Working life

She taught English at Cheltenham Ladies' College for 16 years, but then left teaching for jobs as a secretary, receptionist and hospital clerk in Bristol – in her poems, she later remembered some of the patients for whose records she had been responsible.^[3]

Fanthorpe's first volume of poetry, Side Effects (1978), has been said to "unsentime