Hope Squire

Evelyn Hope Squire Merrick (1878–1936) was a British composer, pianist, and political activist who supported women's suffrage, vegetarianism, Esperanto, and new music. She opposed England’s participation in World War I. She published and performed under the names Hope Squire and Hope Merrick.

Biography Squire was born in Southport to engineer and poet John Barret Squire and his wife.

Squire studied piano with Henry Gadsby, Tobias Matthay, and Ernst von Dohnanyi. She taught piano and presented recitals at London’s Steinway Hall and other venues. Together, she and Merrick gave recitals for two pianos. They would sometimes play new compositions without telling the audience the composer’s name. At one of these recitals in 1915, they performed a duet version of Claude Debussy’s La Mer.

Merrick was an active member of the Manchester Men's League for Women's Suffrage. Squire sewed a banner for the group in 1914. Variations on Black Eyed Susan''

Vocal Four Songs of Hiawatha’s Childhood (text by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) “Imogen” (text by Henry Newbolt) “Merry Merry Lark” (text by Charles Kingsley) “Messmates” (text by Henry Newbolt) “My Valentine” (text by L. Barret) “Skylark” (text by L. Barret) “The Boy and the Rosebud” (text by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe) “Two Red Indian Love Songs” (text by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) Two Songs from Hiawatha (text by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) “When I am Dead, My Dearest” (text by Christina Rossetti) “Widow Bird Sate Mourning” (text by Percy Bysshe Shelley)