AustLit

Foreword by H. L. Maitland 1st. December 1920. In these pages will be found a literary quality quite unusual in one so young. I shall be surprised if the public which read this little volume, will not love her for the written word, and this, I am sure, is all she asks of life.

M & M comments: 'Winifred Maitland Shaw (Mrs. R. M. Taplin), born at Maitland, New South Wales, was 14 years of age when The Aspen Tree and Other Verses was published. It revealed, along with some derivative elements, a personal cadence and a flexible use of verse forms, relying a good deal on mythological glamour and effectively using the carol-ballad manner. The later work repeats, without much extending, these qualities, containing nothing to equal the lyric, :"Fine Clay" in the first collection, a poem which is astonishing as the work of a girl 14 years of age.'