Amy Audrey Locke

Amy Audrey Locke (1881 – 19 June 1916) was an English historian.

Early life Locke was born in Otterbourne, Hampshire, the only child of her parents. She came from a family of modest means. Her grandfather had been a chimney sweep, and her father, Alfred Locke, was a butler at Winchester College who eventually became its porter. Locke went by her middle name, Audrey, throughout her life.

Education Locke attended St Swithun's School, Winchester, and became the first recipient of the Charlotte Yonge scholarship. For her achievement, Locke received a letter of congratulations from the Princess of Wales, later Queen Alexandra. Female students therefore undertook the same examinations as male peers, but were awarded a certificate attesting that they had completed the required examinations rather than a formal degree. Locke was subsequently awarded a certificate with 2.1 honours. VCH, founded in 1899, employed predominantly young women to research and draft a written history "of every English county and parish". At this time, women historians were often pigeon-holed into research or supportive positions to male historians. Between 1905 and 1911, women wrote 78 per cent of the series' histories, and conducted most of the research, though few were credited in VCH's published volumes.

Locke's contributions to the project concerned her home county of Hampshire; they would be published in the third volume of the VCH project in 1908. She conducted fieldwork by travelling to sites by bicycle. Locke also contributed to entries on Nottinghamshire and Worcestershire in later volumes.

Locke earned a reputation as a capable researcher. In this work, Locke was noted to interpret Jane Seymour as more personally ambitious than other contemporary Tudor historians. While delivering largely positive reviews, the Daily News and Saturday Review both mistakenly referred to Locke as a man. The Evening Standard described the book as "extremely interesting [and] well written."

The next year, the Hanbury family, a lineage including John Hanbury, commissioned her to write a similar history of their ancestry. Locke's work for the Hanburys would be published posthumously in 1916.

In 1913, Locke published an entry into Kenneth Norman Bell's English History Source Books anthology, covering English history. Edited by Samuel Edward Winbolt, Locke's edition was entitled War and Misrule 1307-1399. Some time afterwards, Locke was commissioned by the Plough Court pharmacy (precursor to GSK plc) to write a book about its history.

Entry into artistic circles Locke's later friendship with William Thomas Horton, and her frequenting of the British Museum's library, brought her into the acquaintanceship of writers including H. Rider Haggard, Ernest Rhys, and W. B. Yeats.

Some requested Locke's help with research to aid their literary endeavours.

Personal life

Relationship with Arundell Esdaile Locke's work often brought her to the segregated women's section of the British Museum's reading room.

Relationship with William Horton and friendship with W. B. Yeats Around 1908, Locke met William Thomas Horton, illustrator and creative collaborator of W. B. Yeats. Horton dedicated his 1910 publication, The Way of the Soul, to Locke. The pair, who lived not far from each other in Hampstead, moved into a property in Cartwright Gardens together in 1912. He regarded both Horton and Locke as personal friends after meeting Locke for the first time in June 1913. In dedicating his 1925 work, A Vision, to the memory of Horton and Locke, he described the pair's arrangement. She reviewed Horton's The Way of the Soul in December 1910,

Locke's death had a severe negative impact on Horton's mental health.

Unpublished and posthumous works

Plough Court, the Story of a Notable Pharmacy, 1715–1927 (1927): When Locke died before she could complete her history of the precursor to GlaxoSmithKline, Esdaile completed her manuscript.

Legacy Yeats' 1925 poem 'All Souls' Night,' an epilogue to A Vision, describes Locke's relationship with William Horton: "Nothing could bring him, when his lady died / Anodyne for his love."

In 2014, Winifred Dawson published a biography of Locke, entitled The Porter's Daughter, the life of Amy Audrey Locke.