Eva Dobell

Biography

Eva was the daughter of Wine Merchant and local historian Clarence Mason Dobell from Cheltenham, and the niece of the Victorian poet Sydney Dobell. She volunteered to join the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) as a nurse in World War I. Her experiences in the VAD prompted her to write poetry about, inter alia, wounded and maimed soldiers which has been well-thought of by many versed in the ways of poetry. She also took part in the morale-boosting work of writing to prisoners of war. Her full name was Eveline Jessie Dobell and she was born the youngest of three children on 30 January 1876 at the Grove, Charlton Kings in Gloucestershire, England. She died on 3 September 1963 at the age of 87 years at which time her home address was Abbeyholme, Overton Rd, Cheltenham. She never married. Her mother was Emily Anne Duffield a native of Manchester, England.

Poetry

While she was also known in her time as a regional poet (one of her Gloucestershire poems was recently set to music), Dobell is best known today for her occasional poems from the war period, which all describe wounded soldiers, their experiences, and their bleak prospects. A few of these poems are widely dispersed on the internet, and these continue to receive some scholarly acknowledgment. "Night Duty," for instance, is cited as one of many poems by female war-poets and nurses that provide access to an experience rarely shared by male poets such as Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. Perhaps the most frequently reproduced is "Pluck," especially on sites dedicated to the Great War. "Pluck" also found its way into printed anthologies such as The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the First World War, and was even set to music.

After the war, she continued to write; in all, she published half a dozen books of poetry, a verse drama, and edited a book of poems by Lady Margaret Sackville.