Writer wants info on muse for Hughes

Edna Wholey from Conisbrough was a friend of Hughes when he lived in South Yorkshire and was so taken with her that she influenced his early poetry.

Hughes – author of such collections as Crow, Birthday Letters and The Hawk in the Rain, as well as children’s classic The Iron Man – was born in Mytholmroyd in West Yorkshire but moved to Mexborough when he was seven where his best friend was John Wholey, Edna’s younger brother.

Poet, novelist and biographer Steve Ely, whose book Ted Hughes’s South Yorkshire: Made in Mexborough comes out in July, wants to find out more about Edna for a paper he is presenting to the Ted Hughes Society’s Sheffield University Conference.

Mr Ely, who has been nominated for the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry, said: “Edna was the older sister of John Wholey, Ted’s best friend in the mid-1940s. Edna was three-and-a-half years older than Ted and he developed something of a crush on her and she had a significant influence on his early poetry. She died in the early 2000s.

“I’m looking to trace people who knew Edna during the 1940s and 1950s, to get a feel for her character and personality and any other relevant information and anecdotes.”

Mr Ely said that Edna lived with her family at the Lodge House at Crookhill Receiving Hospital in Conisbrough and went to Morley Place Junior School and later Northcliffe School. She may have attended Mexborough Grammar School.

Her parents were John and Edith Wholey. John was head gardener at Crookhill and she had two younger brothers, Doug and John.

In the 1940s she qualified as a nurse and in the late Forties worked as a nanny in Derbyshire before moving to Bedford.

Mr Ely, former headteacher of Darfield Foulstone School near Barnsley, said that he hopes that local people will provide him with interesting new information.

He said: “I’m sure there are people out there who knew and can still remember Edna.”

Mr Ely is involved with a group developing a Ted Hughes Trail and a Ted Hughes Poetry Festival in Mexborough.

Send any information to Antony Clay, Rotherham Advertiser, Brookfields Way, Manvers, Wath-upon-Dearne, Rotherham S63 5DL.