Eveline Jessie Dobell 1876-1963
Eva Dobell was born in Charlton Kings in Gloucestershire, the youngest of three children of a wine merchant and local historian and the niece of the poet Sydney Dobell. When WWI broke out she enlisted in the V A D (Voluntary Aid Detachment) and served first at The Priory hospital in Gloucester and then in France, tending to wounded soldiers. She put her experiences into verse in poems such as Pluck, Night Duty and Advent 1916 and also wrote letters of encouragement to prisoners of war.
Between 1902 and 1959 she published half a dozen books of poetry and is best remembered for her war poems but also wrote fondly about her beloved Gloucestershire countryside in the volume, A Gloucestershire Year, published in 1909 and A Bunch of Cotswold Grasses (1919). She also published a verse drama, A Woodland Tale: A Phantasy and edited a book of poems by Lady Margaret Sackville.
Eva Dobell was an independently-minded woman who never married, an avid wild-life campaigner and a keen traveller to various parts of Europe and North Africa. Her war poetry is well regarded and features in many anthologies. She died in Cheltenham, aged 87.
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