Blanche Edith Baughan

Blanche Edith Baughan (16 January 1870 – 20 August 1958) was a New Zealand poet, writer, botanist and penal reformer.

Early life and education Baughan was born in Putney, Surrey, England, on 16 January 1870, one of six children of John Baughan and Ruth Baughan (née Catterns). Baughan attended Brighton High School for Girls.

Family Baughan’s mother Ruth was mentally ill and in 1878 Ruth and John divorced after living apart for two years. After the divorce John Baughan moved the family to Brighton where he died in 1880. however Baughan’s biographer Carol Markwell found no record of this.

Career After graduation After graduation Baughan lived and worked in the Settlement Movement in Shoreditch and Hoxton in the East End of London. There she saw poverty, disease, unsafe working conditions and poor living standards. She made her last visit to England in 1906. In 1914, recognising that forest habitats and birds were being threatened, she joined conservationist Harry Ell and botanist Leonard Cockayne as founding members of the New Zealand Forest and Bird Protection Society; the society foundered during World War I but was succeeded by the Forest and Bird Society. in a by-election following the resignation of William Hoffman. She was the first woman elected to the council, and stood for office following a dispute with the council over the state of the road outside her house. She did not seek re-election in 1938.

Death Baughan died in Akaroa in 1958. It was well-received by reviewers. Some of the poems in Reuben and Other Poems were written in England and have English subjects while others were written in New Zealand. It was Baughan's only published work of fiction and much of it is about life on Banks Peninsula; many of the stories had been previously published in magazines or newspapers.

Baughan wrote for periodicals in New Zealand, Australia and Britain, including The Spectator which paid her for her essays and poems. Whitcombe and Tombs published a number of her essays as books and booklets including ones on Arthur's Pass and the Otira Gorge in 1925 and on Mt Egmont in 1929.

Awards In 1935, she was awarded the King George V Silver Jubilee Medal for her contribution to social services.

Selected works Travel writing The Victoria Falls (1907) – published in the Lyttleton Times The Finest Walk in the World (1909) – first published in The Spectator Snow Kings of the Southern Alps (1910) Uncanny Country (1911) Forest and Ice (1913) A River of Pictures and Peace (1913) The Summit Road: its scenery, botany and geology (1914) – written with Leonard Cockayne and Robert Speight

Studies in New Zealand Scenery (1916) Akaroa (1919) Glimpses of New Zealand Scenery (1922) Arthur's Pass and the Otira Gorge (1925) Mt. Egmont (1929)

Other non-fiction People in Prison (1936)

Poetry

Fiction