Roberts, Ursula

Biography

The British writer Ursula (Wyllie) Roberts was born in 1887, the daughter of the "ardent conservative" Lt.-Col. R.J.H. Wyllie. By early adulthood she had rejected many of the beliefs of her upbringing and become an "idealistic agnostic" and pacifist. She married the socialist, pacifist Reverend William Corbett Roberts in 1909 and began her career as a poet, novelist and activist, publishing "The Cause of Purity and Women's Suffrage"-"a tough-minded pamphlet on prostitution which confronts low wages and child abuse"-in 1912. For later publications Ursula Roberts used the pseudonym "Susan Miles." The poems and stories of "Miss Miles" were published in various journals and volumes. Her major books are Dunch (1918), a book of free verse sketches about Crick, "an old-style rural parish" in Northants, Blind Men Crossing a Bridge (1934), Rabboni (1942), a memoir of her late husband in 1955, and the verse novel Lettice Delmer (1958). Roberts was active in peace and women's movements throughout her career, maintaining her pacifist ideals even into the Cold War when many British intellectuals had abandoned theirs. In the 1960s, she became a strong supporter of nuclear disarmament.

Epithet: née Wyllie alias 'Susan Miles'; spiritualist