AustLit

Mrs. Adela Florence Nicolson, 'Laurence Hope' (1865-1904), poetess, born at Stoke House, Stoke Bishop, Gloucestershire, on 9 April 1865, was daughter of Arthur Cory, colonel in the Indian army, by his wife Fanny Elizabeth Griffin. She was educated at a private school in Richmond, and afterwards went to reside with her parents in India.. In 1889 she married Colonel Malcolm Hassels Nicolson of the Bengal army and settled at Madras. The name Violet, by which her husband called her, was not baptismal. Mrs. Nicolson devoted her leisure to poetry. Her first volume, in which she first adopted the pseudonym of 'Laurence Hope,The Garden of Kama and other Love Lyrics from India, arranged in Verse by Laurence Hope, was published in 1901. Mrs. Nicolson died by her own hand, of poisoning by perchloride of mercury, on 4 Oct. 1904, at Dunmore House, Madras. She had suffered acute depression since her husband's death two months before. She was buried, like General Nicolson, in St. Mary's cemetery, Madras.