Life and Work
At 17 she suffered a devastating spinal illness and was paralysed for the rest of her life. She began to keep diaries about flowers, the changing seasons, and birds and other creatures, all observed from her bedside window. This practice eventually led to the writing and publication of her first book, Daddy Longlegs, and His White Heath Flower, in 1885 under the pen-name Nellie Cornwall.
Later she came to devote much of her attention to Cornish folklore and legend. She collected and recorded many stories about the Piskey folk, fairies of Cornish myth and legend. She published most of her works in this category under her better-known pen-name of Enys Tregarthen.
After Tregarthen's death, the writer Elizabeth Yates edited her extensive unpublished materials for publication.
Read more about this topic: Enys Tregarthen
Famous quotes containing the words life and/or work:
“Above the forest of the parakeets,
A parakeet of parakeets prevails,
A pip of life amid a mort of tails.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“I am from time to time congratulating myself on my general want of success as a lecturer; apparent want of success, but is it not a real triumph? I do my work clean as I go along, and they will not be likely to want me anywhere again. So there is no danger of my repeating myself, and getting to a barrel of sermons, which you must upset, and begin again with.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)